


Lessons in Normality

by relenafanel



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe, Assassins & Hitmen, Bottom Bucky Barnes, Bottom Steve Rogers, Canon-Typical Violence, Captain America Steve Rogers/Modern Bucky Barnes, Happy Ending, Hydra (Marvel), Identity Porn, M/M, Meet-Cute, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Recovery, References to Depression, Romance, SHIELD, Shrunkyclunks, Spies & Secret Agents, honeypot au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-20
Updated: 2018-10-21
Packaged: 2019-08-04 22:36:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 38,002
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16355564
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/relenafanel/pseuds/relenafanel
Summary: Things Steve knows about his boyfriend Bucky:How he looks with his face relaxed in sleep. That he can perfectly flip pancakes. The way he’s open about things Steve is still adapting to, like therapy and depression and sex toys and being a millennial. The way he laughs with his mouth wide open and his eyes squinted, and the cheerful way he cheats at cards and loses at laser tag.The way he seduces Steve with a knowing glint in his eye.  The way Steve responds to it, stronger each time, taken by his beauty and competence and snark and compassion (or the compassionate way he boots Steve in the ass when he needs a push).Things Steve doesn’t know about his boyfriend Bucky:That he’s an undercover operative gathering intel on Hydra, SHIELD, and which Steve is affiliated with.Otherwise known as The Honey Pot AU





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [umetnica](https://archiveofourown.org/users/umetnica/gifts).



> A big loving thanks to ellebeesknees [for the artwork. ](http://lenadraws.tumblr.com/post/179251198236/drawn-for-the-amazing-relenafanel-s-story)
> 
> Extra warnings for:  
> Rumlow is a dick and says something homophobic  
> Hydra/SHIELD has been gaslighting Steve for years  
> A lot of this focuses on Steve's recovery from depression - prompted by Bucky but not reliant on Bucky  
> Once Steve finds out who Bucky really is things get a bit action-y  
> Bucky kills Rumlow. If you're a fan, you might want to stay away.  
> This is an AU without the Avengers, so there won't be cameos.

 

 

> _Captain America is suffering from PTSD, depression, and suicidal tendencies. It is my belief that SHIELD has been deliberately isolating him in order to encourage his mental strain and keep him as a thoughtless pawn. Both his apartment and furniture encourage uniformity and conformity, his schedule is structured so he is always on call and available at a moment’s notice, his duty to SHIELD never far from his thoughts, and he has been encouraged through exposure to spend time with STRIKE.  - **Agent James Barnes, July 25 2015**_

_**Lessons in Normality** _

_**** _

Steve wasn’t sure how long he stood there listening to Senator Seisling talk.  It was rude to look at his watch, yet alone pull out his cell phone to see if he could beat a level of Jewel Legend within five lives.  There wasn’t anyone who would save him from political talk, and Seisling could talk his ear off.  All the words sounded off to him.  He was having trouble adapting his New Democratic and Socialist leanings to the current political reality, and everyone seemed to crave his approval.

He couldn’t give it.  He’d fought and died for America, but in the 70 years since the country had gone in a direction he was having trouble reconciling with the reason he went to war.  He was supposed to give it time, and he didn’t disagree with that observation, since there were already a handful of things he could stand up for and say ‘this. This is America’ – and the rest? Well, Steve was making it a point of educating himself so he wasn’t approaching conversations from the perspective of a relic.

He’d gotten good at wording observations like he was giving faint praise without committing to anything.  ‘It’s certainly a more twenty-first century viewpoint than the one I grew up with’ was his favorite to use when he couldn’t think of anything better to say.

No one had ever noticed that it might be an insult.

His eyes scanned the room as he nodded to a point he didn’t hate to agree with, feeling exhausted from it all.  He practically lived at SHIELD headquarters, and Senator Pierce always seemed to be holding some kind of fundraiser or campaigning in the penthouse.  It was all just so….

Steve paused in a way that would be noticeable to anyone who knew him -- Peggy definitely would have laughed at him for it -- when he saw the man with the brown hair and sharp suit across the room.  Steve looked away immediately and excused himself from the conversation with Seisling, feigning a need for a drink.

He circled around the room towards the bar, and couldn’t help but keep glancing towards the man.  He should look like any other person at this party, rich and boring, but there was something about him that kept drawing Steve’s eye back.  It wasn’t just that he was gorgeous.

And he was.  Fuck.

But there was more to it than that.  Steve met gorgeous people all the time, and none of them gave him a sharp jolt of interest, the kind that was curiosity and a precursor to arousal.  There was a confidence in the man’s stance that was at odds with the self-effacing laugh he let out to a comment.  His hair was styled and his hands looked manicured, but he gave off the same air as someone ready for an opportunity to escape that Steve did.

Their eyes met, partially because Steve was barely being subtle from all the glances he shot across the room, and partially because everyone’s eyes eventually got drawn to Steve as a recognizable ‘celebrity’.

(cue eye roll)

The attractive guy grinned at him, polite, dismissive.

Steve considered his glass of scotch before trying a taste.  The expensive alcohol was wasted on him, but eventually he’d been dragged to enough of these parties that he’d started ordering it out of pettiness. It made him feel slightly more in control of the spiral of his life when no one told him he couldn’t order a good scotch.  He wasn’t the entertainment, he was a guest, even if he’d rather be doing anything else.

He turned back around and almost ran into the attractive guy.  Steve hadn’t heard him approach, but he might have been a little lost in sad thoughts about how he managed to get the attention of every pompous windbag in a 3-block radius but couldn’t lock eyes with a cute man across a room for any length of time.

“Hi,” the man said, grinning at him as his hand came up to help steady Steve’s drink.  “Sorry, sorry. I’m told I walk too quiet for my big feet.  I didn’t mean to surprise you, especially since it could have ended very badly for me,” he said, quirking his eyebrow towards Steve’s drink.

Steve opened his mouth to answer and then had a moment where he actually saw the opportunity to flirt.  It wasn’t often that he saw it until after, and he jumped on it. “I’ve been known to knock people completely off their feet.  But don’t worry, I would have caught you.”

The man laughed.  “Be careful.  I might take you up on that and invite you out for coffee."

Steve found his mouth turning up at the corners.  He made it a habit to never say yes to people asking him out without getting to know him first.  He didn’t like how they saw his body first, or they saw his face and knew who he was, and thought he was a conquest.  There was something about the phrasing of the offer that made him smile. He thought about it for a moment. “Sure,” he answered with a small shrug because why the hell not?  

Steve had noticed him first.

The man was in the middle of nodding at Steve’s moment of hesitation.  He did a double-take. “Did you just say sure?” he questioned, eyebrows pulling together in a frown.  He took a step back so he could take in Steve’s face.

“I did.” Steve shrugged again, but this time it was to hide his uncertainty because he wasn’t sure what to do with that.  “But it doesn’t sound like you expected to carry through with the offer.”

“It’s not that,” he answered, a vaguely pained expression on his face.  “It’s just – I know who you are, obviously – and I noticed that you’ve turned down other interested people tonight.  I promised myself I’d come take the risk of asking and then go home reassured that I hadn’t missed an opportunity.  And then you just…”

Steve didn’t know how to convey that he thought the man was gorgeous and he wanted to take him to bed immediately without putting himself out there in a way he’d never been comfortable with.  But, considering, Steve wasn’t used to not forcing himself into acts of bravery, especially when other people were setting an example.  “I always turn down offers, but I think you’re gorgeous so I’d rather say yes and see what happens.  Steve,” he offered his hand, because even when people knew who he was, it was polite to introduce himself.  Especially if he was considering bringing someone home with him.

“Bucky,” the man said, reaching for Steve’s hand. His handshake was firm.  “It’s good to meet you.  How about we find somewhere quiet to finish our drinks and we can set up a time for that coffee?”

Steve thought about that for all of two seconds, dismissing the chairs put out in clear sight of the room.  “Come with me,” he said, tugging Bucky over to a corner of the room.  He played it casual as his hand rested against the wall, looking around the room to see if anyone was watching him, and then swiped his security card over a semi-hidden door, pushing it open.

“Oh!” Bucky said in surprise as Steve led them out to a hallway that had been kept hidden during the party.  It led to more secure and private areas, and so of course it had been one of the first places Steve had explored a few years ago when he’d been new to SHIELD’s charity work.  It wasn’t quite within the secure SHIELD facilities, still on the floor designated for events and public meetings, but it also didn’t have prying eyes, as many security personnel, or a camera every 5 feet.

It was the kind of place for clandestine meetings.

“Where does this lead?” Bucky questioned, looking around the hallway in interest.  His eyes took in the EXIT sign at the far wall and his eyes lingered.  “The news says you live here.  Back to your bedroom, then?”

“No, come on,” Steve urged, beckoning Bucky to follow him before security could spot them.  He pulled Bucky through another doorway, this one leading out to a private balcony.  It was outfitted as a casual but impressive place to hold a meeting, currently just the bones of the structure still present this early in May.  Benches were built into the floor, the padded cushions stowed in a closet back inside.  There was a space for a table, four heavy plant potters, and a single can used for an ashtray that someone had clearly snuck out for secret smoke breaks.  Best of all, during this time of year it was equipped with a patio heater.  Steve moved over to turn it on as Bucky shoved his hands into his pant pockets and looked around.

“Oh,” Bucky said, walking over to the glass railing and leaning over enough so he could look down.  A cold wind blew through his hair, making the strands move in a charming way Steve hadn’t expected, mostly because he’d been assuming Bucky’s coif worked with copious amounts of gel.  “Huh.  You can’t tell this is here from the ground.”

“There’s a lot of things you can’t tell from the ground,” Steve replied, walking over so he was standing next to Bucky.

“Like that this is a shady government organization?” Bucky asked with a smirk.  “I don’t know, the complete lack of branding anywhere is a hint. The number isn’t even on the building.”

Steve frowned at him and cocked his head.  “True.  SHIELD is better than most, though,” he added, because anything Peggy Carter had a hand in couldn’t be anything but true.  Everything he’d seen backed up her legacy.  It should be something he was excited to be a part of, but Steve had trouble being excited about anything that existed in the shadows.

“Hmm,” Bucky hummed, and then looked back out.  Time Square was a block away, and from that distance they could hear the cacophony of traffic, people, and music. There was a glow from the lights that made it easy to see, despite Steve’s enhanced eyesight.  It was his favourite part of having the headquarters here.  On slow days he sometimes went out and walked the busy sidewalks, enjoying being one in millions.

It made him feel less like he didn’t belong.

The railing was a sharp presence against his back as Steve watched Bucky look out over the city.  “It’s beautiful up here,” he noted.  “And still.  The city is going about its routine, but from up here it’s all so… distant, like a picture.  Like you can breathe it in and touch it.  Tangible.  And I just said two contradictory things.  You must think I sound foolish,” he said, looking over at Steve and grinning.

“I know what you mean,” Steve answered instead.  “It’s one of my favorite spots in the building.  I like to come up here to think and to remind myself what I’m fighting for.”

They had a moment of eye contact, Bucky leaning into Steve’s space, and Steve enjoying it.  “I bet you know a lot of places for secret trysts,” Bucky said with an easy grin, hand wrapping around Steve’s tie and tugging.  It was a gentle pressure that brought Steve along with it until they were flush against each other.

“No?  I don’t,” Steve answered in concern, reaching up to coax Bucky’s hand loose.  He hadn’t been opposed to this going in that direction, but hearing those words was like the shock of the Arctic Ocean all over again. “I’m not…”

Bucky let go easily, moving his hands so Steve could see them.  “I didn’t mean it like an implication of how often you do this.  I just meant that I bet no matter what floor we were on you’d know somewhere we could go.  You spend a lot of time in this place,” Bucky shrugged. 

“I sleep here between missions sometimes,” Steve told him.  “But I do have an apartment a few blocks from here.”

“Even better, I can’t see living at work, it sounds like it sucks,” Bucky said, conversationally.  There was something about him that made conversation easy. “Do you mind if I kiss you?”  He swayed forward, the corner of his mouth tilting up.  It wasn’t an aggressive move, just a signal of his interest, and Steve felt himself watching Bucky’s face and wanting to reach out to touch Bucky’s side as though he needed steadying.

“Yeah,” Steve answered, and then moved forward himself.

Steve had noticed Bucky’s mouth, the lush red lips he tended to lick often.  They tasted as fresh as the champagne being poured at the party, effervescent and sweet.  The kiss was testing, slow and a bit stilted the way first kisses could be.  Bucky didn’t seem to mind, encouraging it to continue with the way he looped his arms around Steve’s neck. Steve licked into his mouth, running his tongue along the sensitive skin behind Bucky’s top lip, startling an appreciative hum from him.

It went on for minutes, seemingly hours, as they learned how they other kissed.  Bucky broke it off to breathe, panting against the side of Steve’s neck.  Steve’s fingers were digging into the muscle of Bucky’s back.  He was warm and vibrant, and it felt like he was the first person Steve had touched in years.

Bucky licked his mouth and looked back at Steve, a sharp interest and recklessness in his gaze.  “Can I blow you?”

Steve felt his brain swoop entirely out of his head and settle somewhere in his lower spine.  He opened his mouth to say no, not because he didn’t want to but because he thought it was the proper answer, and then thought ‘fuck it’. There was no proper answer to a beautiful man offering to get on his knees for you.  Bucky was looking at him intent and confident, patient. Like he didn’t mind if Steve said no but hoped he said yes. It was the last that had Steve swallowing heavily.  “Yeah,” he answered, throat clicking so the word creaked halfway through.

Bucky’s expression turned to disbelief again.  If Steve wasn’t looking right at him he would have missed it.

“You don’t have to,” he said in a reassuring tone, his hand cupping Bucky’s arm to steady him.

“I want to,” Bucky assured him, his knees buckling so he could slide down Steve’s front and look up at him with a grin.  “Preconceived notions, that’s all. I assumed you’d say no, but I wouldn’t have offered if I wasn’t into it.”  He said this while opening Steve’s pants.  Steve was half-hard from making out with Bucky, from the risk and the interest in it, and the way Bucky had felt against him. 

Bucky offered him a sly glance before taking the head of Steve’s cock into his mouth.

Steve inhaled, sharp and surprised, despite knowing it was coming.  It had been a long, long time since the last time someone had his dick in their mouth, and it hadn’t been the way Steve had expected this evening to go.  It hadn’t been something Steve expected from his life at all these days.

He made a noise from the back of his throat and collapsed back against the railing as Bucky slid down with the kind of casual easiness that said he enjoyed giving blowjobs.  Bucky’s hands came up to Steve’s hips, holding him in place as he continued going down.  His hands were surprisingly steading and Steve gave himself over to the feeling of being held down and having his dick worked over.

The party still going strong on the other side of the wall, the pounding music thrumming through his blood.  There wasn’t a lot of chance they’d be caught, but the possibility of it lit up the risk parts of Steve’s brain he usually only felt during assignments.

“God,” Steve said, throwing his head back.  There was the sensation of weightlessness, like he was dangling upside down above the city.  The railing keeping him in place didn’t matter, all that did was the cool night air on his face, the lights and sounds of the city below him, and the way Bucky was sucking on his cock, his hands sure on Steve’s hips to keep him in place.

Bucky eased back, encouraging Steve to move his hips in and out in shallow thrusts.  Steve could feel Bucky’s throat close around his cock in a swallowing motion.  The wet heat and slight suction felt so much better than Steve’s fist usually did.  It had been a long time since he wanted to experience something like this.

Bucky’s finger slipped behind Steve’s balls, putting pressure as he went down again, taking in as much as he could.  Steve kept as still as possible, one of his hands gently in Bucky’s hair.  “I’m gonna,” he warned a few shallow thrusts before coming, staring down helplessly at the man kneeling at his feet.

Bucky swallowed most of it and then stood to spit what he couldn’t over the side of the railing.

Steve looked at him and then looked at the ground stories below them and started to laugh, holding on to the railing behind him to keep himself steady. “God,” he said.  “I will never think of isolated rain drops the same way again.”

“This is New York, buddy,” Bucky said, wiping his chin on the collar of his button up shirt. It was a mess of spit and come, and he looked fucking gorgeous.  Steve felt a bit helpless because of it. “It’s usually piss.”

“Do you want to get that coffee sometime?” Steve asked after Bucky finished wiping at his mouth and had paused to look at Steve, almost uncertain at how to respond.  His mouth was red and wet and sinful, and Steve was starting to get hard again just looking at him.  “Or I could return the…”

“Favor?” Bucky asked, laugh in his tone no matter how wrecked his throat sounded.

And god, if that wasn’t thrilling too.

“I was going to say blow job.  I could return the blow job.”  Steve took a step towards him, feeling a bit like a baby foal, uncertain on their legs.  It reminded him of being newly serumed and trying to run.

That got him an actual smile.  “Coffee sounds good,” Bucky answered, bypassing Steve’s offer entirely.  “Give me your phone and I’ll give you my number.”

x.x.x.

Steve called Bucky the next morning.


	2. Chapter 2

 

Bucky picked a small café in Chelsea for their date.  Steve walked downtown to meet him, arriving early enough that he had time to be uncomfortable with the ordering process, the finicky little bar stools along the wall in lieu of tables, and the very confusing fact that two of the people sitting close to him seemed to be closing an under the table business deal.

“Hey,” Bucky said cheerfully, interrupting Steve’s focus on the conversation.  He dropped his coat on the chair next to Steve, leaned in to kiss his cheek, and then pulled out his wallet. “I’ll be right back, ok?” he said and then left to get in line.

Steve watched him, less because Bucky was just as gorgeous in a pair of jean and a casual shirt as he was in a suit, and more because he did everything that confused Steve with the ease of someone who lived it often.

Though, _the jeans_.

Bucky returned, sitting easily on the stool and even crossing his legs, like he didn’t feel like his ass was half perched on it. Maybe it was an acquired skill Steve just hadn’t acquired yet. “It’s good to see you,” Steve admitted and wondered what the proper etiquette was to greet someone who had his dick in their mouth.  Should he lean in for a kiss?  Definitely not a hand shake. Maybe he should pat Bucky’s arm?

No, it was probably a good thing that the moment passed because that would have made it more awkward.

“I didn’t expect you to call,” Bucky said, and then took a sip of his coffee.  He blew out a breath immediately because of the heat, and then took another sip.  

It should be irrational behaviour but instead it was pretty adorable.

“Of course I did.  I promised.”  Steve frowned at him.  There’d been a verbal agreement between them that Steve would be in touch.  He didn’t go back on promises when he could help it.

Bucky laughed at Steve’s face, waving his hand.  “Ok, yes, I appreciate the lack of guile in it, and I like the charm of your politeness in setting up a coffee date with a phone call.  It made me feel nice; I hadn’t realized how much that personal touch could matter.”

Steve wasn’t really sure what that meant.  He covered his confusion by taking a drink of his coffee.  

Bucky cocked his head to the side and looked at him.  “Most people text these days, even to set up dates.”

That put Steve’s back up.  He didn’t like phrases like ‘these days’ even when it was trying to be helpful.  He’d been around for almost four years now, being treated like he didn’t know how to text was insulting.  “I know how to text.”

Bucky opened his mouth and then paused.  “I meant to compliment you, but I ended up doing the opposite, didn’t I?” Bucky said easily, giving Steve a sheepish smile as he ran his hand through his hair.  “You made me feel like I didn’t just blow a guy at a party and then got the usual brush-off of a promise for coffee.  It’s happened a few times to me, is all.  It’s a reflection on me.  I like to make people feel good first but sometimes they don’t have the courtesy to be honest about their selfishness.”

Steve didn’t know how to answer that.  There were a lot of details to work through and he didn’t know whether to continue to be insulted or to be angry on Bucky’s behalf or to settle somewhere between and be concerned.  He hadn’t felt like he’d taken advantage when Bucky had been so enthusiastic about getting on his knees, but he was starting to reassess that.

“I’m working on it in therapy,” Bucky told him, just as easily as he did everything else, leaning back in his seat and looking at Steve with an earnest and amused expression.  “But then you looked so tempting and ruffled that sometimes it’s important to take a leap.  It’s less about good or bad habits and more about enjoying the moment, and I enjoyed the moment.”

“I did too,” Steve answered, feeling his shoulders relaxed.  “I think I made you another promise,” he continued with, finally realizing the best way to treat Bucky’s easy confession was to prove himself as someone who followed through on more than calling for a coffee date.

Bucky laughed.  “Okaaay,” he said, a pleased smile teasing at his mouth, but his focus turning towards the cup of coffee in his hand.  “But first I’d like to see how this date plays out.  Would you like to go for a walk with me? It’s one of my favourite ways to get to know someone.”  He stopped playing with the cardboard sleeve on his coffee and looked up to meet Steve’s eyes.

Steve wouldn’t have said no to a walk, but there was something about Bucky that hit him in the gut like a sledgehammer.  He was beautiful and open and confident and not averse to taking risks even when they left him vulnerable.

“I’d enjoy that, but first I think I need to call the police on the men sitting in the corner.”

x.x.x.

“I wouldn’t have expected anything different from Captain America,” Bucky said cheerfully, waiting for him and holding out a drink to Steve when Steve finally had a chance to step out of the café full of apologies for making Bucky wait.  It turned out he’d witnessed a black-market smuggling sale on his day off, when all Steve wanted to do was spend time with Bucky.

Part of him had expected Bucky to leave, and if he was lucky it would be with an apology text and a promise to meet later.  But that was Steve’s own experience shaping his expectations, the same way Bucky’s had shaped his.

The last time Steve had the time or the interest to date someone, women had a tendency to take one look at him and decide there wouldn’t be a second date and men would have had to hide their interest in public.  

For some reason Bucky’s approval made Steve feel like he’d passed a test, maybe not a deliberate one, but he knew better than anyone what the Captain America mythos said about him.  Recently, people had been saying he was too busy with problems of state that he wasn’t in touch with what America actually needed.  That one hurt a bit, because everything Steve had ever done was for his country.

But it was true, wasn’t it?  He still didn’t know how to be in the twenty-first century, not really.

“Steve?” Bucky shook the drink he was holding.

Steve looked at it.  “I don’t like plain black coffee.  I like it strong and thick and with milk, but I have no idea how to order that or where to get it.”

Bucky stared at him.  “Ok,” he answered, reaching out and tossing the to-go mug in the garbage.  “Let me show you.”

x.x.x.

And if Steve ended up on his knees between a shrub and a fence with Bucky’s hand in his hair, well… it wasn’t really that surprising, was it?

x.x.x.

Their second date was spent walking a few miles on the Highline.  It was nice.  Steve enjoyed the relaxing view and chatting with Bucky, and he enjoyed the way he felt a little nervous.  Less nervous than their first date in a way, but that one had been an explicit promise.  This felt more like… dating.  He liked that Bucky’s version of dating was so lowkey it consisted of a coffee and a meandering walk.  Steve didn’t get a lot of opportunities to meander.

Or, maybe, he didn’t take them.

“I never come up here unless I’m dating,” Bucky told him.  “It’s one of my moves.  How about you?  What do you do on a date?”

Steve hesitated, but only long enough to figure out how to phrase it. He didn’t mind sharing with Bucky; if Bucky didn’t at least see hints of Steve’s unfamiliarity with dating then he wasn’t as observant as Steve thought he was.  “I don’t really have moves since I don’t usually get second dates.  In the late 30s it would have been something like this. Obviously not here.  In Brooklyn.  Maybe go to a malt shoppe,” he said completely aware of how quaint that would sound, and he was right because Bucky’s mouth turned up in a grin.

And Steve liked that he made it happen.

“I feel like you might be having me on with that last one,” Bucky told him, brushing his shoulder against Steve’s.  “I’m from Brooklyn, too, you know?”

“Really?” Steve asked, pausing to look at Bucky.  Maybe that was why he felt so drawn to him, like Bucky was someone he could _know_.  Steve didn’t feel like he had much in common with anyone.

“Yeah, I mean, I used to have to study you in school.  Half my history lessons made sure to work in our local hero.  If I’m being honest we all started mocking it pretty early on.   _What would Captain America think of your behavior_?” Bucky said in a falsetto.  “Well, from what I’ve seen, I think you mostly would have approved of me punching a bully in the nose, so…”

“Probably,” Steve agreed, smiling wanly.  It wasn’t the first he’d heard about it.  One of the weirder consequences of being a missing national hero was that he returned to the living to have a whole generation believe they knew who he was. There was a receptionist at SHIELD who cowered the first time it took her more than a minute to fill out a form for him.  She’d dropped her pen and apologized, and Steve had been deeply uncomfortable with the idea of the fear he evoked for things Steve Rogers - or Captain America - would never chide or berate someone over.

It was a deeply disturbing phenomena.

He learned to affix a gentle patient mask to his interactions.  Steve wasn’t always the most patient of people, but he’d learn to be so people wouldn’t fear him.

“Yeeeah,” Bucky agreed.  “There’s no way to casually work that into conversation.  I know you noticed that I have certain expectations of what I expect from you, and I want you to understand that it’s not just from the myth we all grew up on, it’s also because your name was used to evoke a certain kind of behavior from kids in my school.  When I look at you I don’t see a lot of Captain America, or at least not a lot of the Captain America I was raised on where you were synonymous with some kind of disapproving deity looking over us.” Bucky reached out and put his hands on Steve’s elbows, prompting him to relax out of the way he was defensively crossing his arms in front of him.  “It sucks, I know.”

Steve relaxed his arms until they were at his sides.  Bucky trailed his fingers down his forearms until his fingers were brushing against Steve’s.  Steve took the opportunity to tangle his hands with Bucky’s, unable to really stop himself from touching.  Bucky’s hair in the sunlight looked lighter than it had the night they met, his eyes a vibrant blue in comparison to his black coat.

And god, he was the kind of gorgeous Steve always found himself admiring.

“That version of you I grew up on wouldn’t have ended up having sex with me within 30 minutes of meeting me.  Well,” Bucky finished with a grin.  “I mean, I suppose he might have been a repressed dick hypocrite who liked to smite people with one hand while jerking off on them with the other.”

“What?” Steve said in shock and then burst out laughing.

“Yeah, we know some Republican politicians like that, don’t we?” Bucky continued in a smooth, amused tone.  “But you were very sweet and flirty and gave me your number, so I was pretty confident before those 30 minutes were up that you weren’t anything like I expected.”

“No,” Steve answered, and saying it out loud felt like a benediction.  “I’m not like that at all.”

Bucky let go and brought his hands up to frame Steve’s face, leaning in for a kiss.  There wasn’t much of a height difference between them, Steve noted, appreciating how easy it was.  His hands automatically went to Bucky’s hips to hold him in place, gently so Bucky could step back at any point, but in a way that made him present in the kiss beyond allowing it to happen.

It seemed to be what Bucky noticed, too, if the way he grinned at Steve like he’d proven something was anything to go by.  “I wanted to get this conversation out of the way early on,” Bucky told him.  “It feels like a dirty secret to carry around - that myself and a lot of other Brooklyn kids kind of hate you for a very specific reason,” he smiled at Steve through his eyes, a sideway glance as he continued walking. “Everyone has their secrets, but that shouldn’t be one of mine considering how much it worries me I might accidentally say the wrong thing in a way that hurts you.”

“I appreciate that,” Steve told him, reaching out and brushing his fingers against Bucky’s.  A kiss was one thing.  “May I?” he asked, hoping Bucky would agree to hold his hand as they walked.

Bucky grabbed his hand in a firm grip.  “I hope,” he told Steve, giving his hand a squeeze, “that you’ll bear with me while I adapt to unlearning almost 30 years of bullshit, at least for a little while. I don’t want you to feel like you need to hold my hand - metaphorically,” he said, a charming rueful smile on his face.  “You can hold my hand literally whenever you want, but if we’re still going on dates in a month and I haven’t gotten over my prejudices, just fucking dump me, ok?”

“I hope we are,” Steve answered, ducking his head slightly and giving Bucky an uncertain glance instead of promising anything. Steve knew himself enough to know that if Bucky was even close to being as bad as he thought he was, Steve wouldn’t be walking hand in hand with him.  He’d already watched Bucky check himself after making a few assumptions, with a lot more adaptability than a lot of people did.  He appreciated that Bucky wanted to clear the air of it, though, and maybe let on to a few of his own vulnerabilities.  “You’ve adapted well so far.”

“Oh good,” Bucky answered in a cheerful tone, mock-wiping fake sweat off his brow.  “Phew.  I just. I like you, or I like what I’ve met so far. I don’t want to fuck it up.”

Fucking it up was a concern Steve had as well.  How long would it take for Bucky to realize that Steve’s baggage was a lot more than it appeared on the surface?  At least Bucky knew who Steve was and who he had been.  Even if there were years of misconceptions and conditioning about Steve’s status as the American Ideal, at least Bucky knew Steve had been dead for almost 70 years.  “You probably won’t be the one who fucks anything up,” Steve replied.

They seemed to think about that in reflective silence. Steve enjoyed the feeling of Bucky’s hand in his, the warmth of his palm and the strength in his fingers.  It made Steve feel a bit like his hand was in Bucky’s strong grasp instead of the other way around, and that feeling was something he never knew he needed as badly as he did.

“I’m a little chilly,” Bucky told him as the mid-afternoon sun receded behind a heavy cloud covering and the wind picked up.  “Want to get supper with me?”

x.x.x.

They didn’t end up having sex after that date, but Bucky kissed him for five minutes outside of the subway stop before he had to leave to get back to Bushwick, and Steve left him feeling a bubble of warmth in his chest.

x.x.x.

On their third date they met at City Hall Park with the plan to walk across the bridge and back.  Steve was looking forward to going home, if only for an hour or so. Brooklyn was so close to Manhattan, and yet SHIELD’s homebase was in the Time Square area and they expected Steve to be able to respond to alerts within minutes sometimes. And, really, sometimes Steve was a coward because it was easier to stay in Manhattan than face all the changes in Brooklyn.

Including the fact he wasn’t sure he could afford an apartment there on his SHIELD salary.

It was overcast, the warmer spring thaw turning back into an arctic chill.  Bucky showed up wearing a nice peacoat, grinning at Steve when he saw him despite the cold.  “Hey,” he said, fisting his hands in the lapels of Steve’s leather jacket.  “I like this jacket.”

“Thanks,” Steve answered.  “You look good,” he tried to say at the same time Bucky leaned in for a hello kiss.  Bucky muffled the words, his hands tight in Steve’s jacket and his mouth insistent in getting everything possible out of his hello.  Steve kissed him back with the same level of interest and desire, wanting Bucky more and more each time he saw him. 

They kissed standing in the middle of the sidewalk, people walking around them on either side as a subway train let out.  

“Thanks,” Bucky answered when he stepped back, subtly trying to wipe his mouth on his sleeve. “The coat does the talking.  I’m wearing an old hoodie under it, but somehow with this coat it looks like a deliberate fashion choice.”

“Hi,” Steve replied, and laughed, tugging Bucky into walking next to him as they crossed the street to get on the bridge.  It was windier without the buildings to act as a barrier, and Bucky had his hands in his jacket pockets.  Steve felt his fingers itching with the selfish need to take Bucky’s hand, and he resisted it, shoving his own hands into his own pockets.

Bucky started talking about Brooklyn as they walked, inspired by the view, chatting about what it was like growing up for him.  He spoke of the gentrification of the neighbourhoods, and how he still impossibly loved it, more than anywhere else in New York.  Steve found himself opening up about his life growing up in a tenement, and the poverty and working class lifestyle he remembered as a child.

Bucky told him that his most impossible dream had always been to get an apartment in Brooklyn Heights, one of the ones with the million dollar views.  “Maybe if I win the lottery I can’t afford to play,” he said in a sardonic tone, and Steve told him about the area being rooming houses when he’d been a kid.  Bucky nodded and engaged in Steve’s perspective instead of treating it like an ancient history lesson.  Steve was very aware that it sounded like a 90 year old courting a 30 year old but Bucky didn’t say anything to hint at that.

They were more than halfway across the bridge when the dark clouds overhead finally let go, spitting freezing rain.  “Oh for…” Bucky said, looking up at the sky in despair.  “Really?  At least rain we would have called romantic,” he told Steve.  “Or snow!  Snow is romantic!  But this is just miserable.”

Steve was charmed all over again by Bucky.

Freezing rain was miserable, and cold, but if Bucky wanted romance then Steve wanted to give it to him.  And really, it wasn’t that bad.  Steve had survived a lot worse than freezing rain.

“I don’t know about that,” Steve said, drawing on Bucky’s arm to get him to stop.  He was squinting, one arm brought up to protect his face.  “The tourists are all running for cover,” he pointed out, unzipping his jacket and drawing it off, bringing it up over his head and stepping in flush with Bucky so he could cover Bucky’s head too.  “We’re alone.  Extreme weather is the only way that could happen.”

“I suppose I should kiss you instead of pointing out that we can’t see the view anymore? Or that the tourists are probably the sane ones?”  Bucky licked his lips, already drawing Steve in.  The puffs of air from his breath were warm against Steve’s face.

“I suppose you should,” Steve answered, leaving one arm up so he could hold on to his jacket and looping the other around Bucky’s back.  He could feel the little shards of ice prickling against his skin and the back of his shirt was taking the brunt of it.  Bucky was warm against his front, and he was smiling, and Steve felt wonderful.

“Freezing rain I can manage,” Bucky told him, “But if it starts hailing I’m out.”

There weren’t entirely alone on the bridge, that was an exaggeration. There were still the die-hard locals who crossed the bridge every day and weren’t phased by the weather, but besides the occasional rush of feet going by them and the sound of the traffic below, they were entirely ensconced in their bubble.  Considering that Steve had yelled at a tour group for taking up far more than half the bridge and bottlenecking the foot and bike traffic to a two-foot margin when they’d first entered, the quiet was verging on magical.

Or maybe that was the way Bucky felt in his arms.  He was thrilling to touch, and he wasn’t risk averse if the way he crowded Steve back against the railing, hiding them from view as well as possible, and working his large palm and long fingers over Steve’s dick.

“I have a plan.  Think you can keep hold of that jacket while I get you off?” he asked, amused tone and sly eyes, which was a look Steve was learning to love.  

“All day, if I need to,” Steve answered, which had always been his stubborn go-to of an answer, but was now something he didn’t need to suffer to prove.  It was an in-joke about himself that would only really amuse him. 

Steve tensed as someone approached them.  The straight arc of the bridge didn’t leave a lot of hiding places and they were clearly in view, but the weather wasn’t great for visibility.  Anyone approaching had their face down and their head covered as well as possible.

“Shh,” Bucky prompted, face tucked into the curve of Steve’s neck.  His nose was cold, which was a funny thing to notice in the moment.  “Keep your arm around me like you’re protecting me from the elements.  They won’t care to notice where my hand is.  They’ll naturally avert their gaze at the PDA.”

Then he moved back in for a kiss.

Steve sighed into it almost helplessly.  His heart was racing, his thigh muscles turning into a helpless pudding at the tight way Bucky massaged his dick, and the idea that someone else was walking past them went straight to it.  

God. Bucky was hot.  And Steve was into this a lot more than he should be.

“Let me know when you’re close. I’ll unzip these pants so you don’t make a mess in them.”

Steve nodded and tightened his hands on Bucky’s waist.  Bucky tilted his head to look at Steve’s face, his free arm rested on Steve’s shoulder so he could easily lean in.

“Hmmm,” Bucky hummed in thought, pressing himself against Steve’s thigh, and Steve considered ways he could return the favor.

x.x.x.

Bucky had a cup of coffee in his chilled hands.  The collar of his shirt was wet around the edges from where water dripped down his neck, but for the most part his shirt was dry.  Every time he looked at him, Steve had to resist the urge to laugh with euphoria.  Steve was wet, and he would be cold and miserable if sitting in a Starbucks with Bucky didn’t fill him with warmth. 

Or maybe it was the serum protecting him from the cold.

“Eventually we’ll have to talk about sex, like what we enjoy and what’s not on the table,” Bucky said, which was rich considering he’d just gotten Steve off in public like it was nothing.  Of course, Steve hadn’t moved to stop him and probably would fling himself off the bridge in protest if anyone implied that he should be ashamed of that.

“I like trying new things,” Steve answered with a casual shrug of one shoulder as he picked up his drink.

Bucky jolted so hard he sloshed coffee on the table.  “What--” he started, half a question.  Then he moderated his tone and leaned closer. “What’s your definition of new things?  Like… has everything been….?”

“No?” Steve asked, slightly confused at the way Bucky was reacting, a little wide-eyed, almost horrified.  Then it hit him.  “Are you asking if I’m a virgin?” he asked incredulously. “Don’t you think it’s a little late for that?”

“Well I didn’t think you were until you said ‘I like trying new things’ like you had no other opinions on the matter.”

Steve flushed, despite the cold. “I don’t have a ton of experience, is all,” Steve answered, speaking into the rim of his cup so he had a physical barrier between them.  “So, you know, I liked what I’ve done.”

Bucky opened his mouth.  Closed it.  Skewed his face a little like he was using it to express the thought instead, but all Steve really thought was that it was adorably expressive.  “That’s fair,” he finally answered with a huff.  “Not that surprising, now that I think about it.  So, what have you…?”

Steve paused to wonder how much to tell him and how to phrase it.  “After I got the serum my libido crashed into me all at once, to the point where I was so desperate to get off I let Hitler---”

Here, Bucky choked so hard on his coffee that the only other people in the cafe looked over at them.  Steve was unsuccessful about hiding how smug he was that he’d timed the joke well, waiting for Bucky to swallow and breathe again before saying the punchline.

“--- or, the guy who played Hitler during the USO tour? I forget his name, it was probably John, but we all just called him Hitler.  Anyway, I took him up on his offer, didn’t hate it -- so much so that it stuck in my brain all this time to the point where I woke up in 2011 and learned what bisexuality is and found it’s a good definition.”

“That’s a clickbait article waiting to happen,” Bucky noted, once he’d stopped coughing long enough to digest Steve’s story.  “Oh my god,” he continued, putting his head down on the table, pillowed by his forearm.  “You did that on purpose,” he grumbled, and seemed to expect Steve to say something because after a pause he tilted his face up so he could look at Steve.  Steve just shrugged in response.  “You did do that on purpose!” Bucky accused, jerking into a sitting position, surprised and amused. “You’re such a dick.  I think I like that about you the most.”

 


	3. Chapter 3

Bucky was laughing as Steve unlocked the door to his apartment, fumbling with the key in his haste.  Bucky peeled off his sweater, revealing a well-washed t-shirt beneath.  The corner of his mouth turned up in that sly smirk he had when he was about to do something daring to drive Steve nuts, and he pulled off the t-shirt too, standing shirtless in the hallway of Steve’s building, his clothes bundled in one arm and the other reaching around to the collar of Steve’s shirt.  If anyone saw them there’d be no doubt in their mind that Bucky was starting their evening in before Steve even opened the door.

“I’m questioning your dexterity,” Bucky told him, breaking Steve’s contact with the doorknob by sliding his body between Steve and the door.  “You’ll have to prove yourself to me later,” he said, kissing Steve and then pulling him forward so Steve had no choice but to bracket Bucky in against the wood.  Or, his choice would be to pull away entirely, and Steve was even less inclined to do that than he was to get caught making out with Bucky in the hallway, his skin warm against the palms of Steve’s hands, and his mouth practiced and intent.  Steve could feel the smile against his lips, the one Bucky tended to do when he was happy and pleased he’d gotten away with something.  Steve had kissed him often enough over the past few weeks to recognize it.

Bucky was a fucking menace, and Steve was so grateful to him for it.

Steve’s hand ended up in Bucky’s hair, tilting his head to the side so Steve could focus on his mouth.  They ended up standing with one of Bucky’s shoulders pressed against the door for balance and one of his legs hitched around Steve’s hip.

Bucky hummed in pleasure, one of his arms around Steve’s shoulders and the other deftly unbuttoning his shirt, like that had been his intent all along. 

Steve froze, hearing one of his neighbors start to put on their shoes through the door.  Bucky’s attention cast over to her door, so amused as he deliberately arched into Steve’s hold.  “Sound goes both ways through a door,” he pointed out.  “She must really need to leave.  Or she’s oblivious.”

Steve finally managed to collect his brain cells enough to reach around Bucky to unlock his door, quickly herding him inside.  “Let’s get in.”

“For someone who pretends to be so concerned with being caught with your dick out in public you sure do let me get away with a lot,” Bucky laughed, easily walking into Steve’s apartment backwards, pulling Steve with him and barely pausing long enough to let Steve slam the door behind him.  He then winked outrageously at Steve.  “I think you like it.”

“I haven’t tried to hide it.”  He was grinning at Bucky, a little goofily. His heart rate was up, and he felt like he’d almost just gotten caught with his hand in the cookie jar.  It was a kind of innocent exhilaration that felt so rare in his life, and he loved every second of it. “I’d just rather keep on good terms with the people around me.”  Most of them were other SHIELD members. Steve hadn’t figured out if SHIELD owned the building and he was being billeted, or if it was a consequence of the proximity.

“Well I sometimes get off on getting off in public,” Bucky told him, peeling off his pants so he could leave them in a pile with the rest of his clothing.  “I like the urgency of it.  But I can think of a few ways I can risk your relationship with your neighbors without going back out that door.  Wanna make some noise?”

He turned and paused when he saw Steve’s living room, and his expression hitched for a moment, subtly, but enough that Steve knew what Bucky had seen.  There was a reason he didn’t spend a lot of time in his apartment.  He usually didn’t think much about how spartan it was in terms of how other people would see it.  Probably because Bucky was the first person besides SHIELD agents who ever entered it.

“I…” Steve started and then stopped.  There wasn’t much to say besides excuses, and saying that he’d always meant to buy a rug or curtains and never got around to it said more than he meant it to.  Bucky made him feel acutely aware that he’d never tried.

Bucky turned to look at him and there was something thoughtful in his expression.  “It’s ok,” he said, holding out his hand.  “Kiss me?”

x.x.x.

Bucky had figured out how to use Steve’s coffee maker. It was a clunky old thing he’d found at a flea market and reminded him of home.  Steve knew how to use the shiny new one he’d bought at the same time as his toaster – a device he used happily, by the way – but he liked the taste of the coffee in the old one better.  It felt more like a comfort, and when it came down to it that was why he drank coffee.  The stimulant didn’t work on him, so it was more about the taste and the warmth and the habit of it.

“You can buy these new, you know?  Like, the model, not those drip things,” Bucky said, standing at Steve’s kitchen in his boxers.  “Tastes less like you might get lead poisoning by drinking it.”  Despite his complaints, he was still drinking the coffee, because if there was one thing in Bucky’s life that he considered a necessity, it was coffee.  Steve had learned that about him almost immediately.

“Sure, but the lead poisoning is the charm,” Steve told him, reaching around him for a mug so he could make his own cup.  “I like that you stayed the night.”

“You invited me to.  I’m not going to say no to these amenities,” he told Steve, gesturing to his couch, chair, and coffee table combo.  “IKEA special, right?”

Steve ducked his head and felt his ears start to burn in embarrassment.

“Hey, no,” Bucky said, shifting closer to Steve so he could curl his arm around Steve’s waist.  “I didn’t mean to embarrass you or call you out, it just doesn’t seem like something you picked yourself.”

Steve hadn’t.  A SHIELD lackey had brought Steve to IKEA the same week the SHIELD medical staff decided he was fit to live on his own.  The apartment had been procured for him, and it was hinted that if he wasn’t a decorated war hero turned celebrity during the time he was MIA that they would have furnished the place for him too.  It might have been better if they had, because Steve had been overwhelmed by the large warehouse, the furniture choices, the prices, and the bright lights until he ended up just pointing at one in the hopes of being able to leave.

So he had picked it. No matter what Bucky thought.

“The first store you stepped foot into in 2011 was an IKEA?” Bucky answered in horror once Steve summarized all that for him.  “Are you serious?”

“I’d been in a grocery store as part of my rehabilitation into society,” Steve answered, defensive for some reason, but also glad to know that maybe it hadn’t been entirely his fault.  “I should have been able to handle it, especially if it was a test.”

“For fucksakes,” Bucky said, throwing himself down on Steve’s couch.  “It wasn’t a test, the dumb underling probably just resented having the job of taking you shopping and tried to rush you through it.”

Steve sat in the side chair across from him, gingerly because he’d always been convinced it wouldn’t hold his weight if he sat on it fully. 

“Look at you.  You clearly hate that chair,” Bucky pointed out, putting his coffee down on the table with a clink as he stood and walked over to Steve.  He took Steve’s face between his hands gently.  “Want me to ride your dick on it til it breaks and you have to buy a new one? Or we could just bring it directly to the curb and let someone else enjoy owning it.”

Steve looked up at him.  Bucky pressed his thumb into the corner of Steve’s mouth and then climbed on his lap easily, his knees pressed against the back of the chair.

“I can’t believe someone thought it was smart to buy Captain America one of the cheapest fucking armchairs on the market.  What the fuck.”

x.x.x.

Bucky wasn’t shy about taking his pleasure, his knees planting on either side of Steve’s hips, his fingers gripping the back of the chair as he took Steve’s dick at a rapid pace.  He seemed to be daring the chair to break in half with how little he cared if it did, making desperate little sounds every time their hips slammed together. 

Bucky was…

There weren’t words for how Bucky was. There were things Bucky just didn’t give a shit about, and having hang-ups about sex seemed to be one of them.  It forced Steve into the present more times than he could count, and it forced him to acknowledge that it was something he needed, too.

Steve did more than hold on and let Bucky move over him, he gripped Bucky’s hips and forced him to share the rhythm, participating just as much as Bucky was until both of them were a sweaty, come-sticky mess.

“Christ,” Bucky breathed, getting off Steve’s lap with a breathless laugh.  He stumbled backwards a few steps, managing to steady himself before falling into the coffee table.  “Fuck.  God, your dick is…” he said, sitting heavily on the edge of the table.

Bucky looked like some kind of ridiculous pin-up, his hair showing the way Steve had been tugging on it, his skin flushed, and his pants halfway across the room.  As though reading Steve’s mind, he leaned back a little, showing off his taut stomach and soft cock.  He met Steve’s eyes in a challenge, eyes sweeping down over him.  Steve got the impression Bucky was going to tease him back into hardness with just a look and the way he was lounging against the table.

Then his eyes narrowed on the chair.  “How is that still standing?” he accused, pointing a finger at Steve like it was Steve’s fault the chair didn’t break.  “For fucksakes,” he grumbled, getting up and searching for his pants.  “We’re taking it out to the dumpster.”

Steve hesitated when Bucky moved to drag it out the door.  He didn’t actively like the chair, he didn’t think he ever would, but he respected it a little now that he knew it could withstand Bucky’s riding skills.  Steve was still getting used to them himself.

“Ok,” Bucky said with that laugh of his that Steve admired.  Bucky got such joy out of life, not bogged down by any of the things that made Steve have trouble getting through the day.  There was so much more he could learn from Bucky, and wanted to learn from Bucky, than how to order coffee at Starbucks.  “That leaves me with a few minutes before I need to get to work, then,” he said, walking over to Steve and putting his hand on his chest, leaning in for a kiss.

x.x.x.

Steve’s apartment felt even emptier without Bucky in it.  He hadn’t known it could feel colder than it already did.

Instant attraction wasn’t a common thing for Steve.  He’d experienced it with Peggy, but with Peggy it was because she was competent and intelligent first and disarmingly beautiful second.  He loved someone who wouldn’t take shit off the kind of alpha dickfaces Steve spent his life standing up against.  With Bucky it was the opposite.  Bucky was disarmingly beautiful, and he also turned out to be intelligent and normal in a way Steve craved, and Steve wasn’t sure which pulled him in first.

It didn’t seem fair when faced with Bucky’s compassion and his emotional intelligence to call him normal.  It did seem fair to call him beautiful because his lovely face wasn’t the only thing beautiful about him.  He was something Steve didn’t know was missing from his life until he had him.

x.x.x.

 **Bucky:** I have an idea

 **Bucky:** Meet me at the subway stop by your apartment at 4. Bring your metropass and a coffee for me.

 **Steve:** Sorry, getting pulled into a mission. I’ll text you when I’m back.

 **Bucky:** Stay safe.

It was odd, Steve realized, looking at his cell phone as he prepared to turn it off and leave it in his locker.  It had been a long time since someone told him to stay safe and not mean it as a way to protect an asset. It struck him as something he should be used to in his career and the fact that it felt rare and precious gave him a pause.

 **Steve:** Thanks. I will.

x.x.x.

Steve walked up to Bucky and handed him the coffee he’d ordered.  The sun was out and it was warm, the kind of humid spring day that reminded him just how hot the summer was about to get.  Bucky was wearing a t-shirt that showed off his biceps and nice forearms. That was the thing about Bucky.  Every time Steve saw him he thought that Bucky looked amazing, and every time he saw him he found something new about Bucky to focus on.

“Hey,” he said, giving Bucky a quick kiss, hand lingering on Bucky’s waist. It took a lot more courage than Steve let on to initiate it. “I missed you while I was gone.”

Bucky smiled at him.  “Anything eventful? Whatever it was didn’t make the news. I kept my eyes open.”

“Nothing I can share.  And it did make the news, just not with my name attached.”  He let Bucky take the lead, his arm still tucked around Bucky’s waist as they walked.  It always made him feel a little nervous to be so casually affectionate in public, but that was something he was going to force his way through because it made him happy and made Bucky look at him like he was pleasantly surprised and grateful.  That, more than anything, convinced Steve, because Bucky should never have to be in a relationship he felt he needed to keep hidden and he should never be in a position where he was grateful for affection.

No one should.

“Step one,” Bucky said, walking into a home furniture store.  “We find something to replace that fucking chair.  Something you want to sit in that doesn’t continue your pity party for one.  Like,” he said with a look around, and then sat in a large leather chair.  “This is for the kind of person who lives hard and likes to sit their ass on something harder.”

“It’s…” Steve trailed off.  Expensive was what it was, but it was the kind of furniture he probably would have bought if he’d returned from WWII.  There would have been expectations surrounding Steve and what furniture he bought, then.  Masculine things.  Steve probably would have given in to them because he wouldn’t have someone like Bucky with him who rolled their eyes.  Steve probably would have bought whatever the sales person told him he should.

“I don’t really recommend it,” Bucky continued, bouncing up out of his lounge with grace.  “You need something softer.  Healing factor or not,” he said in a low tone while navigating Steve around so he could gently nudge him to sit.  “Think about that.”

Steve made a face at him and then concentrated on actually sitting in the chair for a moment.  He could see Bucky’s point.

“I’m not picking one out for you,” Bucky insisted stubbornly after Steve made him sit in the next one he tried out.  “You have to like it.”

“I don’t know what I like.”

“I know,” Bucky told him, planting his butt in one of the chairs in the middle of the chair section.  He was sitting there like a king on his throne, surveying the room, and Steve.  He had his leg draped over one of the arms and the salesperson didn’t look pleased by it.  Steve didn’t really blame him.  “So what don’t you like?”

“My ma always said velvet was hard to clean,” Steve answered, and it sounded uncertain even to his ears.  It was the only thing he could think to contribute to the conversation.

“Ok, good.  So something we can do certain activities on and clean up after.”

Steve made a face at him.  “Can we not look at this in terms of places we can have sex?” he asked, just as the salesperson came up behind him and Steve could feel the embarrassment work up from his chest in a heated flush.  He planted his feet stubbornly and ignored it.  “I thought I was supposed to pick something I like and not consider you?”

“You are,” Bucky said, flexing the one knee he had planted on the ground and pushing away from the chair with his elbow.  He was standing in one easy movement where most people would have had to turn into a normal sitting position first and then stand.  Bucky’s movement was timed right before the salesperson chided him, and Steve hid his amusement.  “What if you and I go our separate ways?  Then you’ll be left with a chair that reminds you of me.  So, on that note, I’m going to leave you in the capable hands of someone who works here, and I’ll be in the coffee place on the corner.  Pick one or don’t pick any.” He kissed Steve’s cheek, and it felt more like a performance than a real kiss, but his smile was real, and then sauntered out.

Steve wasn’t subtle in watching Bucky go.

x.x.x.

Steve didn’t end up buying a chair until three weeks later when he saw one in a storefront during his morning run that said _sit in me with a book_ and he spent the rest of the run thinking about it.  He thought about it throughout the morning, and how it might fit in his apartment (it wouldn’t) and how it would fit in his life.  He pictured hours reading, he pictured sitting there with a sketchbook, he pictured accidental naps on idyllic and slow mornings.

He wondered if maybe Bucky’s point wasn’t to get him to buy, but to get him actively looking until he found something he _wanted_. Bucky had flipped a switch in Steve’s brain into the ‘on’ position. He wasn’t content with his living room anymore.

He considered that when it turned out to cost more than all his IKEA furniture combined and he felt like he was having an anxiety attack when handing over his credit card.  Steve had thought his wages from SHIELD were ridiculous until he’d tried to live on them, but SHIELD subsidized his living arrangements and he ate half his meals in the commissary, so he did manage to have some savings.

The frugal, responsible part of him wanted to keep his savings for a rainy day, but then he thought of Bucky sending him a gif saying “treat yo self” over and over again.

And thought _Fuck It_.

The chair barely fit in his living room, taking up so much space he needed to carry both his IKEA armchair and the large coffee table out to the dumpster.  It seemed a shame to get rid of them, wasteful.  An hour later both of them had disappeared like Bucky predicted. 

“It’s ok,” Bucky said when he saw the chair, hiding a laugh.  “It just means your apartment is too small.  Have you considered moving?”

“Where?” Steve asked him, holding his hands out to gesture around him.  “I just wanted to get you to stop sending me ‘Treat Yourself’ moving pictures.”

“GIFs,” Bucky corrected, but his eyes were narrowed at Steve.  “I know you know what BuzzFeed is, so don’t even.”

Steve’s lips twitched.  “I know what Parks and Recreation is too.  It’s on my list.”

“Huh.  You have a list?”

Steve reached into the side table beside his couch and pulled out a small notebook, tossing it into Bucky’s lap. 

Bucky reached for it.  “Ok, this isn’t a to-watch list, is it?” he asked, flipping through it.  He looked thoughtful.  “It’s all the things you mean to learn more about?  It’s a good start,” he admitted.  “I mean the concept of writing them down and then Googling them.  But… not all these things are worth your time, you know?  There are a ton of people who haven’t seen a single episode of I Love Lucy, for instance.  I’ve seen maybe an episode or two as reruns as a kid, and I think it might be a good way for you to see what was up in the 50s, but it’s not – you could watch a 3 minute clip on YouTube and know as much as most Millennials.  It depends on whether your purpose is adapting or cramming as much information into your brain as possible.”

“I don’t have the frame of reference to understand what’s important,” Steve admitted, shoving his hands in his pockets and feeling a bit lost.  “And it’s impossible to get caught up.  I can’t spend my days in front of a TV.”

Bucky looked at him sharply for that one.  It was the same expression he gave Steve any time Steve said something that he disagreed with and saw as a challenge to convince him.  “Get your library card, Steve.  June is 50s month.  We’re going to watch everything we can in the next 3 weeks.  Then once we’re in July we’ll move on to the next decade.”

Steve paused pulling out his wallet automatically at Bucky’s request for him to grab his library card.  Bucky watched it happen and hid a smile.  Steve thought about what Bucky was saying. 

It couldn’t be that simple, could it?  No, Steve decided, Bucky was simplifying a complex situation, the same way he forged through other things like whether or not it was smart to date someone like Steve.  He decided, and Steve went along with him because sometimes it was nice to just go along with someone like Bucky.  He reminded Steve of Peggy that way.  “It’s still too much to get through.”

“Do you know what Netflix and Chill is?” Bucky asked him, flipping through his little notebook.  “Yeah, you looked it up a few months ago.  We’re going to cuddle on your couch and watch your television for hours, and then maybe make out a little.”

x.x.x.

 **Bucky:** BTW I just came across this <http://reductress.com/post/ikea-furniture-you-can-safely-fuck-on/>

**Steve:**   Is that the bed I own? There weren’t any links so I didn’t bother checking.

 **Bucky:** aww you’re learning.

 x.x.x.

“Part of your problem is you don’t know how to be off,” Bucky noticed, the second night Bucky came over for a movie, shoving a few pieces of popcorn into his mouth.  He had his legs draped over Steve’s lap.  It didn’t look like a comfortable position, but Bucky’s limbs moved in ways Steve would have to practice stretches to even hope to achieve.  It wasn’t that Steve’s body was incapable of moving like Bucky did, flexibility was one of the bonuses of his perfect body, but his mind needed the training into understanding how to move with that level of grace.

It wasn’t really a priority while training with the STRIKE Team.

“You want me turned off?” Steve frowned at him, half listening to the movie in front of them.  Bucky had been surprised to find out Steve had watched all the musicals and Disney movies from the 50s already.  They currently had a James Dean movie on and Bucky had made a joke about how Steve might have found himself in a sugar daddy situation if he’d met the guy back then, which prompted them needing to pause the movie for ten minutes while Bucky explained James Dean’s sexuality and what sugar daddy meant, to his great amusement.  Steve wasn’t sure he found the joke that funny.

Bucky opened his mouth to speak.  Closed it.  “I feel like you’re using my own language against me,” he said.  “I want you to stop thinkin’ for a bit.  Relax.  Don’t treat your down-time as time wasted.  You need to be human too, so can you just enjoy cuddling on a couch with me and not worrying about ending fascism?”

x.x.x.

Steve looked at it raining outside, checking his phone periodically to see if Bucky was going to cancel on him.  It was really storming out, and he couldn’t help but feel disappointed by not seeing Bucky after the long week he’d had with SHIELD.  There had been a lot of physical training, paperwork, and arguing over whether Steve should carry a weapon.

Steve was a weapon, he didn’t need to carry one.  It gave him an unfair advantage and arguing about it was frustrating.

He was considering texting Bucky to cancel so Bucky wouldn’t have to go out into the storm, but a small selfish part of him needed to spend the afternoon with Bucky’s warmth curled around him, his laughter in the air, and the easy physicality of him.  It was selfish, and Steve was very good about not being selfish, except when it came to Bucky. 

 **Steve:** It’s bad out there, we can cancel if you need to

 **Bucky:** I’m already in the elevator you dick. open your door for me I’m a bedraggled mess.

Steve grinned at his phone even though no one was there to see him do it, or maybe because no one was there to see him do it, and got up to open the door for Bucky.  Bucky stomped in like he’d just come out of the rain seconds ago, shaking himself out.  He was right about being a wet mess, his hoodie damp along the shoulders and across the front.  He was already peeling it off as he took off his shoes.

Bucky paused with his damp hoodie in his hand, looking into Steve’s living room.  Steve took it from his fingers and put it on a hook to dry.  “Oh,” Bucky said, crossing the room to look at the curtains Steve had hung up.  “You didn’t do this for me, did you?”

“Maybe,” Steve replied, walking into the kitchen so he could pour Bucky a glass of water.  Even if he’d almost drowned in the May rainstorm, that didn’t mean he wouldn’t want something to drink.  “You walk around naked in the mornings.”

“You have blinds!” Bucky pointed out, but sounded sheepish.  Steve found out why when he turned the corner back into the living room and found Bucky with his pants off.  In his defense it was more because they were drenched almost up to the knees than for other reasons Bucky might take his pants off.  He’d thrown them over the arm of the couch, sitting on it completely at home in his underwear.

“I did it for me,” Steve said with amusement.  “I like privacy, but I also like natural sunlight.  The blinds were either / or.  I got the idea from that home décor magazine you left.”

Bucky beamed at him, proud.  “Yes!” he said.  “Do it for you!”

“Do you want a pair of pants?” Steve asked him, already crossing towards his bedroom to grab Bucky the pair of jogging pants he used when he was over for the night.

“You don’t want to climb on my very tempting mostly-naked lap?” Bucky called after him, sounding amused, but also turning on the television and making himself at home.  It probably shouldn't be a big deal, but it felt like a pivotal point in their relationship.  “Is Rosemary’s Baby ok? Or would you rather a James Bond movie?”

“How many James Bond movies are there?” Steve asked upon his return, tossing the pants at Bucky’s face, not surprised when Bucky plucked them out of the air before they managed to land. 

“I don’t know, probably too many. Sean Connery got hotter in his 70s than he ever was back then, but there’s some cornerstone references in it.”  Bucky waited for Steve to settle beside him on the couch before going limp, draping himself into Steve’s personal space.  Steve felt something inside him relax the way it always did around Bucky, and he settled in to watch the movie, his fingers in Bucky’s hair, mostly dry from his hood.

x.x.x.

“Eugh,” Bucky whined as he picked up his sweater once their movie was done and he’d pulled Steve into his bedroom for sex.  He’d gotten back into his jeans without complaint, and they were probably worse.  “It’s still damp.  Steve?” he said, giving Steve his best puppy-dog eyes.  Bucky was always appealing, but the expression was almost laughable.  As if he needed to make a certain face to convince Steve to do anything.

“I’ll loan you one,” Steve told him, disappearing back into his bedroom to find Bucky a hoodie.  He had a dark red one somewhere bought by whatever hapless SHIELD junior agent who’d been tasked with dressing Steve like someone born in the 80s. There was a lot of red, white, and blue. 

Steve’s Irish roots showed up any time he wore red.

“This is a rite of passage, you know,” Bucky told him, taking the hoodie from him and shrugging it on.  He raised gathered the material to his face to smell.  The New tags got stuck in the zipper and he held up the sleeve with an unimpressed look.  “It’s supposed to smell like you.”

“Sorry,” Steve said with a shrug, putting his hands into his pockets, charmed.  “I wear the other one regularly.”

“It’s like,” Bucky fumbled to explain.  “Were varsity jackets a thing in your time? A token from your sweetheart?  Give me something to wear that makes me think of you when I wear it.”

Steve stepped forward and broke the New tag off the hoodie and then used the lapels to pull Bucky in for a kiss.  “No,” he said once they broke apart.  “I wear maybe 5 shirts. If you want one, you’ll have to steal it.”

Bucky sputtered a little.

“I thought that was part of the rite of passage too,” Steve pointed out.  “Part of the fun is it being ill-gotten and pilfered goods.  I saw it in a movie.”

Bucky shook his head a little, hiding a smile, and then kissed Steve again quickly.  “Challenge accepted, Steve Rogers.  Be prepared.”

x.x.x.

Cuddling next to Bucky on the couch became one of Steve’s favourite activities.  He looked forward to it, and like Bucky predicted, it was less about what Steve was watching and more about the feeling of Bucky’s body curved against his, the warmth of him, the feeling of him chuckling.  It was about the time he was spending with Bucky and it felt less of a waste than he thought to spend hours in front of a television. 

He stopped hating his living room.

He sat in his chair when Bucky wasn’t there, settled in with a book and a large mug of coffee.  With the sun shining into the room, and a peaceful drone of classical music coming from his bedroom, he felt like he was home and relaxed and somewhere he belonged.  It was such a potent and foreign sensation Steve found himself crying, hugging a throw pillow to his chest until the sobs eased enough to breathe and he was able to relax into the emotion.


	4. Chapter 4

Finding Bucky was one of those lucky things in Steve’s life, the kind where he didn’t understand the _why me_ and how he managed to be so lucky.  His ma used to say it wasn’t luck, it was hard work and perseverance and a little faith, but she also secretly believed in the fey magic of the old country as well as her deep, abiding love for God.

Steve didn’t know where he fell on any of that, but he did know that none of his hard work brought Bucky to him. Maybe, a romantic part of him thought, there was a bit of fey magic to Bucky, in the quick way he smiled and the grace of him, and the way Steve looked at him and saw unsurpassed beauty.

He should have anticipated everything getting worse.  He’d cried the first moment he felt like he belonged, a deep, dark well in his psyche giving up forgotten ghosts.  He’d cried, and because he’d been pushing down his emotions for so long, he thought that might be it.

He was wrong.

“God, you’re fucking gorgeous,” Bucky whispered into his ear, kissing his way down Steve’s neck.  It felt nice, but there was something off about the way Steve felt, his breath coming a little harsher than usual, and not in a good way.  Steve tried to relax into Bucky’s touch the way he always did, the way Bucky made it easy to. Bucky’s hand was sure as it unbuttoned Steve’s shirt, his touch firm the way Steve liked it.  He wasn’t doing anything wrong.  “These big broad shoulders and perfect muscles.  You’re like a dream.”

“I…” Steve answered and choked on the word, cold washing over him. He shied away from Bucky’s touch, the words ringing through his brain in a way he didn’t want but was helpless to stop. 

Bucky, for his part, immediately pulled back from him.  “What is it?” he asked, holding his hands against himself, where Steve could see them.

“Nothing,” Steve answered, but drew away from Bucky even more by getting up and pacing over to the window.  His view was as awful as ever.  Before Bucky came along, Steve didn’t really notice things like that, but now all he could see was the building next door and the dingey alley below.  He never thought of it as an indication of his importance before Bucky.  As an insult.  Focusing on that was easier than focusing on why he couldn’t be touched right now.

“It’s not nothing,” Bucky answered him in his stubborn voice.  He stayed where he was, respecting Steve’s space, but Steve could feel the way he wouldn’t let it go.  He couldn’t even blame Bucky.  Bucky was so good at communication and Steve did his best not to be absolute shit at it.  “Can you please talk to me so I know how to avoid it at least?”

“Yeah,” Steve answered, and then didn’t say anything else, continuing to look out the window.  Bucky settled into sitting on the bed watching him.  He didn’t look comfortable but he did look patient.  It annoyed Steve a little to see how easy Bucky did it.

“It might be easier if you ripped it off like a bandaid,” Bucky told him.

“You said you liked my body,” Steve said in a rush.

Bucky stopped himself from saying something so visibly that his throat clicked.  “I did,” he answered carefully instead.  “It bothers you.”

“It’s not…” Steve tried, not sure how to phrase the idea without it sounding bad.  “It’s from a bottle,” he finally settled on, repeating the words one of the STRIKE team once said to him with a laugh, expecting Steve to think it was funny.  “You’re not complimenting something that… I don’t know, it sounds dumb.”

“Tell me,” Bucky urged him, his expression earnest.  He still had his hands in his lap, but there was a subtle energy around him that made Steve think that Bucky wanted to reach out to him.  It made him feel comforted, to know Bucky wanted to but respected him enough to not. 

“Ok,” Steve answered, and then told Bucky about all the way it felt to him to be complimented on something that wasn’t his, and more than that: to be considered the epitome of attractiveness when he’d spent so much of his life as Steve Rogers, the guy no one looked at twice. When he was done, he walked over and sat beside Bucky, feeling drained.

Bucky listened to Steve intently and silently, looking somber and respectful.  Then he reached out and cupped Steve’s cheeks.  “Have you considered therapy?” he asked.

That question was such a jolt to the system that Steve’s first inclination was to deny it. He’d expected reassurances from Bucky, maybe a hug.  Neither would make him feel better, but then they’d be able to move on from this conversation and Steve shove it put it behind him. “I’m in therapy,” he finally said, hoping that would end the conversation.

“Do you speak to your therapist?” Bucky asked, which was a question no one had ever bothered asking Steve before, if he ever allowed conversation to progress far enough to admit he was getting help.

Which he never did because no one ever asked him.

“No,” Steve admitted, clenching his back teeth and his fists. “It’s mandated as part of my job.”

Bucky looked at him, and it was sharp and knowing, that way he had about him when he’d figured something out.  “You don’t trust your therapist?”

“No,” Steve admitted slowly, feeling like there was something deeper to the words this time and unable to put his finger on it.  “It’s mandated as part of my job.”

“Good boy,” Bucky said, patting his cheek, a little demeaning, and then he started looking through his phone.  “Would you like me to ask my therapist for recommendations for you? Therapist shopping is like finding a good pillow – sometimes you have to try out a few before finding one that helps you sleep at night.  And it’s ok if the first one doesn’t fit.  You know, besides the whole ‘everything costs money’ thing.”

Steve didn’t. But he liked the way Bucky normalized the question.  Sometimes it was hard for him to adjust to the way people just opened up about mental health issues, and there was a whole generation of people Bucky’s age who saw the stigmas as overbearing and were breaking them down truth by truth.  It made him uncomfortable, sometimes, but it also made him glad. It made him feel like maybe all his issues were normal things. “No, I…”

“A list won’t hurt anything,” Bucky said in a firm tone.  “What you do with it is up to you.”

“I…” and Steve didn’t know what to say to that. He ended up flopping backwards on the bed, almost deflating. “Thanks.”

Bucky hummed at him and continued typing into his phone.  Then he stood.  “Let’s go for a walk,” Bucky said, putting his shirt back on.  “Sweat it out in the sun. Maybe yell at some idiots.”

“There are always idiots,” Steve pointed out, not really sure what he was saying.  He felt like he was moving through a thick fog, his thoughts centered on Bucky’s suggestion.

“Yes, and you’re going to tell them,” Bucky replied, walking out into the living room and expecting Steve to follow.  He slipped his shoes on and waited patiently as Steve sat down and properly tie the laces on his sneakers.  Bucky’s patience never seemed to be a mask, not the way Steve’s was.  “Fix your shirt,” Bucky reminded him before unlocking the door.

The walk helped the way Bucky predicted it would.  Steve got to yell at a guy in a suit who wolf-whistled at a group women, and even that made him feel better.  Solid.  More like himself.  He felt foolish for reacting the way he did to Bucky, when Bucky clearly knew him well enough to know how to get Steve out of his own mind in response to it.

“I should go home for the night,” Bucky told him, drawing to a stop in front of a subway entrance. “It’s closer to the job I have in the morning.”

“Ok,” Steve answered, and he realized he’d expected Bucky to spend the night. 

Bucky reached for Steve, holding Steve’s cheeks between his hands and smooshing them together so Steve couldn’t reply. “I like you for your face,” Bucky said. “And I like you for your mind.  And I think you’re hot.  I haven’t figured out if I should tell you until you believe it or never mention it again, but you’ve got to meet me halfway here.  We all have our hang-ups, Steve. That’s normal.  And sometimes leaning on the person you’re dating is normal too.  Leaning on them so much that they break isn’t normal,” Bucky made squished face at him that mirrored how he was holding Steve’s face and then leaned in for a kiss.  “You’re not there yet. I like it when you talk to me, but I don’t think I’m equipped to be the only person in your life who you talk to.  Think about the therapist, ok?”

“Ok,” Steve found himself promising.  “I’ll think about it.”

x.x.x.

Therapist shopping was just as tedious as Bucky described it, but whoever had made the list for him had taken into account the difficulties of working with someone with a top secret job and the PTSD that SHIELD diagnosed him with very early on, so it wasn’t as painful as it could have been.  There was something in his chest that eased at the amount of thought that went into making the process as uncomplicated for Steve as possible.

And, with honesty, a little bit of the resentment he felt towards Bucky for pushing the issue fell away too after he clicked with the third person he met with and he found himself admitting that he was angry to be there and had to answer why.

x.x.x.

Bucky was beautiful in the morning, the soft first rays of sun shining through the open blinds and hitting the angles of his face in a way that had Steve easing himself out of bed, as carefully and quietly as he could, before padding silently to the kitchen for coffee and his sketch pad. 

Everything was sun-washed and peaceful, Bucky’s face relaxed in sleep, youthful and soft.  His eyelashes were a gentle sweep of shadow beneath his eyes, and his mouth, always generous and lush, was parted gently, and Steve felt overwhelmed by him.  There was a beautiful man in his bed, one capable hand curled gently by his face, and the moment felt like time settling into stillness.

Eventually, Bucky woke up and looked at him, blinking the long eyelashes Steve had been sketching with dedicated and loving detail.  He stretched, toes pointed from under the sheet and his body a long line of corded muscles.  Steve’s pencil left Bucky’s face and moved down to the bottom corner of the page, quickly etching the line of him, pencil still moving as Bucky relaxed in bed and then looked over at him.

“You draw?” he asked, eyebrows raising in surprise.  Steve wasn’t sure why that frustrated him.  Sometimes Bucky looked at him with these preconceived notions behind his eyes, surprised by something innocuous Steve did, from speaking out for something he believed in to having hobbies that didn’t include going on missions to take down dictators.  The longer they were together the rarer it was, but at the same time the more annoying it could be.

“Yes,” Steve told him, turning his sketchpad so Bucky could see it. It was a skill he’d never lost practice of, even during the lean years at war where paper was scarce.  He’d taken that one luxury afforded to him by requesting paper and pencils whenever he could get away with it and not explaining that they were for personal use.

He could be selfish, sometimes.  It wasn’t a well-known fact about him.

“You feel a vague sense of guilt over stealing some paper 70 years ago?” Bucky asked in a laughing tone once Steve said all of that out loud to him.  Of course Bucky didn’t get it.  He hadn’t been there, and he’d never lived without anything in his life.  That was a good thing.  That was what Steve had fought for.

There were a lot of things about the twenty-first century that he hadn’t fought for.  A criminally low minimum wage, for one.  A world that thought he would agree with Republicans, for another.  An America that other countries saw as a bully.

“Keep drawing me like one of your French girls,” Bucky told him, stretching obscenely and deliberately, in a way that wasn’t nearly as graceful or languid as the natural one had been.  “But bring me a coffee if you’re gonna.”

“I do get that reference,” Steve told him, quickly etching Bucky’s smug expression.  It wasn’t to the level of detail it had been before, but Bucky had broken his concentration.  He did think he managed to get the pleased, self-congratulatory tilt to Bucky’s mouth.  “Titanic.”

“And the fact you didn’t laugh means you know people have been making it for almost 20 years now.  I’m so proud.”

“I didn’t laugh because it isn’t funny,” Steve told him, getting to his feet and leaving the pencil and drawing book on the chair. 

Bucky sat up suddenly and looked at him.  “Are you bringing me coffee?”

x.x.x.

“I don’t know what I did before you,” Steve admitted to Bucky one morning, a week later.  Bucky was in the middle of scratching his nose and looked at Steve with disbelief.  “Or. I know what I did. I know what I felt like.  I…”

“Steve?” Bucky asked, taking a drink of his coffee and frowning at Steve, the very face of concern.

“It wasn’t good.  I know that I’m not…” he said, cutting himself off suddenly.  He was remembering to be kind to himself.  “I’m working on being more present, and I think it’s working out so far, but I don’t think I would have gotten to the point of even trying if you didn’t come into my life.  So thank you.”

Bucky’s eyes were damp when he looked at him.  “You’re welcome,” he said simply, no joke to ease the mood, no crinkle of his eyes or reassurances.  Just Bucky acknowledging a lot of the things Steve couldn’t say yet.

x.x.x.

Steve’s therapist had a few things to say to Steve about friendship, that were, by large, mostly unsympathetic towards his viewpoint that it was hard to find someone with shared experiences and things in common with him.  She didn’t, of course, actually say that to his face, but her pointed questions, if sometimes gently phrased depending on where in the conversation they were, always hit home like he was being stabbed in the chest. 

 

Did Steve really think that drawing in the 40s was different from drawing now?

Did Steve really think that PTSD was different coming from WWII than it was from Iraq?

Did Steve think that other people who enjoyed Game of Thrones, but with multiple criticisms, were hard to find?

Did he really think that having a different background set him apart in America?

 

Steve hadn’t really tried to make friends since the point in 2012 when he accepted drinks with Rumlow and some of the other STRIKE team members and left the bar feeling sick to his stomach, not from the beers and the greasy food, but from the company.

His therapist wondered if, since he was dating a man, Steve thought that kind of toxic masculinity was the norm, or if Steve considered that maybe the STRIKE team weren’t people he wanted to be friends with?  Wasn’t it unfair for Steve to judge an entire generation based on the behaviour of a particular subset?

It made Steve throw his hands up in the air and admit he was _wrong. About. Everything._

(and acknowledge the only one who could fix it was himself)

That was how he ended up taking a Digital Art for Beginners class every Thursday night at the library. He’d seen the ad after a particularly pointed session and had seen it as an opportunity.  Then the time came to go through with it, and Steve set his jaw and went. Birth-year wise he was the oldest person in the room, but physical-age wise he was dab smack in the middle.  He was also in the middle in terms of computer skills, not the most hopeless, but also not the best.

The mundanity of being middling in comparison to others spoke volumes to him.  He’d believed he was behind in computer skills for his age, and that wasn’t true. In his darker moments he believed he was too old to learn how to use a drawing tablet, and considering the oldest person in the class was in their 70s, that wasn’t true either.  It left him floundering over the ruts he let himself fall into.

“Hey dumbass,” Bucky said once it was over, waiting on the sidewalk out front even though he wasn’t expected to be.  Steve had been texting him all his observations over the last hour and a half, and the greeting confirmed that Bucky had been rolling his eyes a little.  Steve hadn’t particularly met any friends in the class, but he did get the instructor’s email in case he had any questions or got called away for an emergency, and he had a competitive bee in his bonnet after a twenty-something sneered at the hamfisted way he was holding the drawing stylus.  “You’re smiling.”

Maybe because the twenty-something had clearly checked out Bucky on their way by and Steve might not have learned how to comfortably hold a stylus yet, but he was winning at a few things.

Probably not something he should be proud of, but screw it.  “That kid who just checked you out was a dick to me,” Steve told him.

“Aww, you say the sweetest things,” Bucky said, visibly reaching for him.  “Go ahead and claim me as a form of petty revenge.  I love it.  It’s so normal.”

“You’re making fun of me,” Steve observed, but kissed his boyfriend on the sidewalk in clear view of anyone who bothered looking. 

“Yeah, but I’m really proud of you tonight.  You’re letting go of some bullshit, so I thought you might like company. If not, I wanted to see you to tell you that I’m proud of you.”

That took Steve back a little.  “Oh,” he said, pleased.  The last time someone told him they were proud of him, he’d had to make the decision to kill 4 people over the lives of his team, and he was sure it wasn’t something to be proud of.  He was still beating himself up over not finding an alternative solution.  “I’m happy to see you. Want to find a street vendor and grab some food?”

“Do I?” Bucky answered, grinning at the idea of food and linking his arm through Steve’s.


	5. Chapter 5

It was rare but not an impossibility to go more than a week without seeing Bucky.  Steve occasionally got called away for missions, and Bucky sometimes had translating jobs outside of town that kept him away for a few days.  They were adults, they knew the drill of how careers and duties could eat into their downtime. 

Steve was in the middle of reading a briefing about Senator Seisling’s sudden death.  The man had died in a fiery crash in the Financial District, and the accident had been all over the news earlier in the day.  SHIELD was accrediting it to a Hydra assassination, but Steve wasn’t sure.  Steve had re-read the dossier on The Winter Soldier, noticing multiple discrepancies.  Everyone at SHIELD knew to be wary of The Winter Soldier.  Steve had heard the name said with a heavy dose of fear.  He was credited with more SHIELD assassinations in the last decade than anyone else combined, both on missions and, like Seisling, in public.

But something was sticking out to Steve as out of the ordinary.  His kills didn’t usually deal in civilian casualties, for one, but Steve knew how easily missions could go wrong.  There was something else about the briefing that niggled at him when his phone lit up in his peripheral vision. It was almost 2 am and Steve reached for it automatically, thinking he was being called into work.

 **Bucky:** Drunk need extraction

 **Steve:** Ok. Where are you?

 **Bucky:** bar

 **Bucky:** the name is on the menu

 **Bucky:** *blurry picture*

Steve ended up squinting, using his fingers to focus in and out on the image until he could made a decent guess at the name.  He googled the bar to see if their logo matched up with the picture Bucky sent, and once he was reasonably certain he was heading to the right place, he told Bucky he’d be there in less than 30 minutes.

He found Bucky sitting at the bar, slouched over an empty glass morosely. The place was almost empty and clearly in the middle of closing. He gave Steve a bleary-eyed stare when he saw him, and tried to stand, slipping off the barstool with a lot less grace than Steve had ever seen from Bucky and almost continuing to slide to the floor if Steve hadn’t reached out to support him.

“Is he paid up?” Steve asked the bartender, though bartenders had better skills at getting drunk people to pay than Steve would have.

He was waved off, and Steve helped Bucky walk out of the bar and down 3 steps to street level.  He felt fond, because he’d always feel fond with Bucky, and a bit annoyed by the whole thing.  Once they were outside, he hesitated, because the first step in getting Bucky home was easy, but once they were out of the bar he didn’t know where to turn next.

Steve realized he had no idea where Bucky lived.  He didn’t really have an option other than dragging Bucky home with him.

He thought about that while taking Bucky with him on the subway, Bucky’s face pressed against Steve’s shoulder.  He was napping the nap of a drunk person, dead to the world with sudden moments of consciousness and smelling like he’d fallen in a vat of vodka, but soured with sweat and angst and onion rings.

“Come on,” Steve said, nudging him right before his stop.  Bucky came awake suddenly, eyes far sharper than Steve would have accredited towards him at this point.  He barely looked at Steve, his eyes dodged around the car in a quick sweep. 

There was something in Bucky’s eyes that made Steve pause with the familiarity of it.  He had the look of someone expecting danger, and it was an unsettling expression on Bucky’s usually congenial face.  Steve watched as Bucky adjusted to where he was and relaxed.  It took Steve slightly longer to let go of his unease, but, he realized, Bucky was used to taking the subway after midnight while drunk.  He was right to be wary of dangers.

Bucky stood and managed to walk off the car with dignity, following the stairs up to street level. 

It was almost impressive if he didn’t pause about half-way up to puke his guts out on the step.

“Okkk,” Steve answered, grabbing Bucky by the arm and hauling him away before they both got fined.   The walk back to Steve’s apartment wasn’t long, and the streets were quiet.  Usually, Steve would be enjoying the cool summer night, the way the temperature was dropping just enough to remind him that August would eventually turn to September.

Bucky followed him back quietly, listing slightly in the elevator but otherwise away.  He let Steve open the apartment door without crowding him against it.  Bucky, Steve was learning, was less handsy while drunk than he was when sober.

He followed Steve into the apartment and into the kitchen, his footsteps so quiet it was like being trailed by a light kitten.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Steve asked, handing Bucky a glass of water.  Bucky drank it automatically, but winced at the question.  He was a little more sober after his nap and the vomitting than he had been when Steve collected him from the bar. 

“Can’t,” he answered, handing Steve back an empty glass.  “I signed papers.”

Ah.  Work related.  Steve could sympathize with that, at least.  He grabbed the orange juice out of his fridge and poured Bucky a glass of that as well.  It might be a long time since Steve had experienced the effects of alcohol, but he knew how it went.

“It’s a fucking shitshow,” Bucky told him, drinking the orange juice, mouth turned down unhappily.  He put his head down on Steve’s kitchen counter.  “One of those times where everything that could go wrong went wrong,” he continued, echoing Steve’s thoughts from earlier.  “You know?”

“I do know a little about that,” Steve agreed, feeling a little amused.  There was such a radical difference between everything going wrong in Steve’s work and everything going wrong in Bucky’s.  For one thing, people tended to die if things went FUBAR in Steve’s life, but he supposed the impulse to decompress by being drunk and miserable was the same. Unfortunately for Steve the only one that ever worked out for him was the second.

“Yeah,” Bucky agreed, finishing his drink and half-stumbling out of the kitchen and into the living room.  He bypassed the couch entirely and kept walking through the door of Steve’s bedroom, collapsing face-first into bed. 

x.x.x.

Bucky woke up looking like death itself and moving like every motion, sound, and touch hurt.  It was gratifying to know that Bucky didn’t do hangovers looking like a glamour model.  Even Bucky’s face looked sour when he looked at the time on Steve’s stove and accepted the toast Steve handed him.  “You don’t need to take care of me,” he hissed when Steve gave him a glass of water.  “I’ve been doing hangovers on my own since I was 13.”

“Do you want me to ignore you?”

“Stop hovering.  It’s making my headache worse.  It’s bad enough you wake up before most humans do, but you dragged me along with you.”

“There wasn’t another option.  I don’t know where you live,” Steve reminded him in a quiet voice, not out of deference for Bucky’s hangover but because he was doing his best not to telegraph how angry and hurt he felt over that.  “We spend all our time here.”

“It’s not some kind of conspiracy!” Bucky told him, looking irritated and telling Steve he’d failed at hiding his hurt.  “I share a two bedroom apartment in Bushwick with three other people.  The one I share a room with is mildly homophobic, though I don’t understand what he’s doing living in _Bushwick_ of all places, and one of my roommates uses a Jamaican flag as a curtain in the living room to show how much he loves pot, which believe me, I know.”

Steve shrugged at him. 

“It’s white boy frat house levels of wrong,” Bucky continued, losing steam, “and I wouldn’t bring you there on fear of death because I don’t want you to judge me for somewhere I just go to sleep, and unwillingly at that.”

“I wouldn’t judge you,” Steve promised him, though they both knew he was lying.  Steve didn’t fully understand half the things Bucky was saying, but he understood the sentiment well enough. 

“Come on, Steve, I once watched you lecture someone on the subway for fifteen minutes because their t-shirt was racist.  I was proud of you for that, but I basically live in the embodiment of that t-shirt so I’m not really sure what that says about me.”

“That housing in New York is expensive,” Steve answered.  “And maybe you could spend more time here?”

Bucky’s glance was sharp even if one of his cheeks was puffed out from half-chewed toast. “Are you asking me to move in?”

Steve felt himself go red at that, curse is Irish complexion and temperament.  He hadn’t meant to ask Bucky to move in, and from the look on Bucky’s face he was as uncertain about it as Steve was, but Steve wasn’t averse to the risk of it.  Probably it was better to not phrase it like that.  “If you want, but I was thinking more that I’d buy more hangers for my closet so you can leave clothing here.”

Bucky was silent for a moment, looking at him carefully.

“It’s the next step in our relationship, isn’t it?” Steve asked, suddenly a little uncertain, not about whether he could ask Bucky to move in, but whether he should. 

“Giving me a drawer?” He asked.  “You realize I never even brought over an overnight bag?”  Bucky sighed, and ran his hand through his hair.  It fluffed up a bit back to something resembling normal.  “I’m going back to sleep. We’ll have a conversation about this later, but if you’re rolling out a welcome carpet then I guess your first glimpse into domestication is that I need to nap for another 8 hours to get rid of this hangover.  I only woke up to be polite.”

“You were hardly that.”

Bucky gave him the middle finger, but it was done in Bucky’s typical good cheer, if with a bit of a bite, so Steve found himself more amused than insulted.  “Maybe, but I was awake,” he pointed out as a final argument, drained the water, and then disappeared back into the bedroom.

Steve found himself chuckling after Bucky was out of sight, happy and amused, enjoying even the prickly parts of Bucky.  Steve asking Bucky to move in was a momentous moment, but in a quiet way so was Bucky’s bad mood.  He’d never allowed Steve to see him at his worst before, and Steve wanted to know the cranky hangover parts of Bucky too.

x.x.x.

There was a Twitter storm about the Senator’s death led by a journalist who had been about to break a corruption scandal about the man.  There were a few markers in the things he was involved in that stuck in Steve’s mind.  It wasn’t rare for Hydra to assassinate one of their own, but the man was a good friend of Pierce’s and a heavy public supporter of SHIELD, and so the only thing Hydra gained from killing him was tying up a loose end, but it was a loose end that would have been better served by assassinating the reporter instead.

“You’re frowning,” Bucky observed in a croak from the bedroom door. He was dishevelled from sleep but had a healthy coloring that wasn’t so death-pall.  “Something wrong?”

“Something weird,” Steve corrected, not bothering to exit out of Twitter when Bucky wedged himself in next to Steve on the armchair.  The tweets were trending, people worldwide were looking at them.  It didn’t feel like something he needed to hide. The chair was large, but not big enough for two men their size to fit without them sharing space, so Bucky was half lying on top of him, his elbow sharp in Steve’s side as he shifted to get more comfortable.

Bucky looked at Twitter over Steve’s shoulder and then pulled out his own phone, opening the app and scrolling quickly through his feed.  “Weird how?”

“It’s not really lining up yet, I’m probably just missing information,” Steve told him, then nudged his shoulder against Bucky’s.  “You know I can’t really talk about SHIELD stuff.”

“I don’t really want to hear about SHIELD stuff,” Bucky answered automatically.  “Oh for fucksakes, there are pictures of the accident.  Why are people so awful?  Do they really need 5 seconds of attention from retweets that badly?”

“You understand it better than I do.”

Instead of answering, Bucky belched and then curled a little on himself like he was worried more than air would come up.  “Gross, sorry,” he said, genuinely embarrassed in a way Steve didn’t know Bucky could be.  Bucky was kind of the epitome of confidence to Steve sometimes, especially when his own life felt like a struggle.  “I’m a mess right now.”

“You’re not smelling too great either,” Steve told him.  He was a little worried the scent of stale alcohol and sweat might seep into the chair.  He had no problem with it smelling like Bucky when Bucky smelled like himself, but he wouldn’t kick Bucky out of it either.  Febreze was a thing.  Apparently.

“It happens,” Bucky answered with a shrug, the corner of his mouth turning up.  “But yeah,” he said, wrigging out from beside Steve and elbowing him in the side again.  “I need to piss pretty badly, I may as well shower if your delicate nose is offended by eau de stale beer sweats.”

“I think anyone’s would be,” Steve answered, kicking Bucky slightly with his foot, not hard enough to hurt anyone.

“Steve,” Bucky said, standing in front of the armchair, oddly hesitant for Bucky.  Steve looked up at him automatically.  “Thanks.”

The list of things Steve would do for Bucky was extensive.  Bringing his drunk ass home in the middle of the night and then suffering through his hangover with him wasn’t even close to coming to the end of that list.  If Steve put any genuine thought into it, he knew there might not be an end to it, and that wasn’t something he was ready to face.  “Of course,” he said. 

“Can you go buy me a combo meal at McDonalds?” Bucky gave him the really effective eyes and pout.

“I guess.”  His answer was grudging, realizing that the romantic idea of doing anything for Bucky did have limits after all, and that limit was walking into a McDonalds in the middle of Manhattan like some kind of tourist.  If the sudden light in Bucky’s eyes said anything it was that he realized that and was amused.

“I appreciate your sacrifice.”


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for panic attack in this chapter.

Steve woke up in the morning to the smell of food cooking.  He took a moment to squint at his open window in confusion. He was too far up to smell the dumpster outside except on the stillest, hottest days, and so food coming from the bakery down the street or one of his neighbors felt like an impossibility.

Then he heard a drawer in his own kitchen pull out and someone was singing?

Steve groaned and rolled over, groping the bed next to him for Bucky.  Bucky never woke up before Steve did.  Steve usually tried easing himself out of bed only to look over and find Bucky watching him from between the slits in his eyelids, mostly asleep but aware of Steve moving.  He felt bad that Bucky was such a light sleeper and Steve was such an early waker.

A look at the time said it was 7:42 am.  Late for Steve, and around the time Bucky usually staggered out of bed on weekends so he could grab the piece of toast and coffee Steve made him and find his way home.  It made him think about Bucky’s reaction to Steve asking him to move in and how he’d never brought an overnight bag.  Steve had definitely missed a cue there.

He stumbled into his living room and stared into his kitchen in confusion.  Bucky was standing in his boxers wielding a spatula, easily turning it between his fingers as he hummed along to a song playing from his phone, the volume turned so far down that Steve was only starting to make it out from where he was standing.  He went from using the spatula as a microphone to easily moving forward to flip the pancake in his pan, checking the edges with the spatula to see if it came away easily and then oddly putting it down and grabbing the pan handle instead.

Steve didn’t know if he was easily impressed or if Bucky had just done some kind of impossible feat by flicking the pancake over with a fast movement of the pan.

Bucky looked up and met his eyes.  “Oh good,” he smiled.  “You were around to see that.  I haven’t done it in a while so I wasn’t sure it would work.”

“You’re making breakfast?” Steve asked, leaning his shoulder against the doorway.

“I’ve only ever seen you make toast in the morning,” Bucky told him, picking up the spatula again and easily twirling it between his fingers. “So imagine my surprise in finding all the makings for hearty breakfast in your kitchen, all of them open and used.”

“I have a few pieces of toast and hydrate before my morning run.  Then I come back and cook.”  Steve took comfort in his routine.  He’d relied on it when he’d first gotten back, and then he used it as a crutch for a lot longer.  The first night Bucky stayed over, Steve woke up and realized he couldn’t follow his carefully planned out day because that would mean Bucky waking up alone in the apartment. It had been a pivotal moment for him, a quiet one, where he’d needed to figure out how to let Bucky into his rigidly defined schedule.

“Ah, so you’re a brunch guy.”

“Usually I’m out the door by six and back by seven-thirty.”

Bucky squinted at him in distaste. 

Steve shrugged.  “I like to meet the sun.”

“Actually,” Bucky said, sliding the pancake on to a plate and working his way through the steps to pour the batter for a second.  “We have something in common there.  I run at night before bed.  It tires me out enough to sleep, but,” he made a handwavey motion.  “I’m getting another kind of exertion when I stay over.”

“That explains it,” Steve answered without thinking, picking at the edge of the pancake Bucky had made.  It was the size of the pan, and once he realized Bucky wasn’t going to discourage him, Steve ducked into his fridge for jam.

“Hmmm?” Bucky hummed in question.

“Your legs,” Steve responded, getting a clean spoon.  “You have great legs.”

Bucky blinked at him, surprised by the compliment.  Steve found himself standing in his small kitchen trying to remember how often he said all the things he thought about Bucky out loud.

“Thanks,” Bucky replied, a little flushed around the edges.  It would be easy to dismiss it as caused by the heat from the stove gathering in the enclosed space, but he also ducked his head to hide it at the last second.  “Your pancake is getting cold,” he muttered, checking on the edge of the one frying, even though it wasn’t close to being ready.

Steve paused for a second and wondered if this was the time when someone might follow up a compliment by touching.  Someone might, he decided, but he wasn’t going to.

“I thought people like you were a myth,” Bucky noted, watching Steve drop a spoonful of jam on the pancake. Steve finished spreading it and then rolled the whole thing up.  “Here, give me a bite before you finish it off?” 

x.x.x.

They’d taken turns eating rolled up pancakes with jam until all the batter was gone, Bucky pulling baked sausages out of the oven half-way through. It was normal and domestic and so, so important to Steve in a way he couldn’t explain. 

Then Bucky had hopped up on the counter and wrapped those legs around Steve’s neck, which wasn’t really something Steve was willing to share when Rumlow asked why he missed most of the 10am briefing.

Steve had made up a story about a mugger and saving a nice senior’s purse that made him feel a little gross for lying, but had everyone nodding like it was expected of him.  The lie felt like it should stick in his throat, but the secret of knowing why he was actually late made it worth it.  No one thought that Steve Rogers was capable of blowing off a meeting because he was greedily blowing a leggy brunet.

So.

The day felt long. They were practicing infiltration methods for a mission a week out, and Steve was regretting that he’d noticed the time before Bucky could return the favour.  Or, more accurately, he was regretting he’d noticed the time and cared. He was also still working through that niggling question in the back of his mind as to why the files on Seisling’s death didn’t add up.  Or maybe added up too cleanly?  He couldn’t quite explain the discrepancy and it was driving him to distraction.

“Your mind is somewhere else today, Cap,” Rumlow told him, his hand coming down heavily on Steve’s shoulder, and Steve almost told him.  He was opening his mouth to tell Rumlow the truth of why he was distracted, and then he remembered some of the locker room jokes he’d heard in the beginning until he’d made it clear he wouldn’t stand for them.  He’d always known that hadn’t solved anything, that probably still did it behind his back, and he felt a shudder go through his spine instead.

And he felt alone.  Sometimes, having Bucky reminded him of how isolated he was everywhere else.

“Sorry,” he muttered.  “I have a lot on my mind.”

x.x.x.

Steve wasn’t sure what he expected when he went out for a run with Bucky after work.  Or, well, he knew what he expected based on his experience with running on the track at the training facility at SHIELD.  He knew what he expected based on other people who ran in the park at 6am.  “I’m just going to do my own thing,” Bucky had warned him while putting on his sneakers.  “I’m not even going to try keeping up with you.”

And Steve hadn’t expected any differently.

It wasn’t that Bucky proved him wrong.  Bucky didn’t bother keeping up with Steve.  Steve wasn’t sure it was humanly possible to keep up with him, sometimes.  But where Steve had expected Bucky to be casual about it, maybe pace himself at a jog, Bucky actually ran.  Steve kept tabs on him from the corner of his eye, watching Bucky transition from pushing himself at the twenty minute mark into pacing himself.  After five minutes he picked up speed again. 

He repeated that again around the forty minute mark. 

“Hey,” Steve said, pulling up beside Bucky and easing into the same speed he was.  For Steve it was a light canter.

“Don’t limit yourself on my account,” Bucky told him, winded, but not breathing nearly as heavily as Steve expected him to be. He’d fucked Bucky before, multiple times, and had experienced his flexibility and his stamina.  He’d seen and touched and tasted Bucky’s body, but it hadn’t really occurred to him to question how Bucky got to be that fit.  He was aware of how performative going to the gym could be and had assumed that was it.

And maybe it was, but it wasn’t only sit-up reps and lunges.

“You’re good at this.  Your form is excellent.”

“Yours is shit,” Bucky told him, wiping his forehead with the back of his hand.  “You’re giving me that look you give me when you’re thinking about sex.  At least let me have five minutes to catch my breath.”

“If you can hold a conversation you don’t need time to catch anything,” Steve pointed out.  “I’m not going to jump you, I’m just saying.”

“You sound like my coach in high school,” Bucky told him, easing into a walk.  “If you can talk, you can breathe! If you can breathe, you can run faster! But the joke was on him because I was mostly there to socialize.”

“Track and field?  How’d you do?  Is that something to ask? Organized sports is baffling to me.”  Steve rubbed the back of his head and gave Bucky his endearing shrug.

“Ok, I guess,” he said with an answering shrug and a sheepish glance.  “I wasn’t the best in the school, and the best in the school almost qualified for the Olympics.  So I don’t know what that says about my mediocrity --  I was almost as good as someone who was almost good enough for the Olympics.”

“I was never good at anything physical,” Steve told him, hands in the pockets of his pants.  They’d slowed to a walk. “Barely made it through boot camp. I would have been booted multiple times if Erskine hadn’t interfered.  And then suddenly I was physically capable of anything.”

“I remember,” Bucky told him, sizing Steve up with a critical expression.  “The story of perseverance and patriotism.  It’s been used for over half a century as a recruitment strategy for the military.  Look at what Steve Rogers did for his country.  Are you going to let this short asthmatic with the list of health issues do something you can’t? The least you could do is lay down your life like he did.”

The shame Steve felt was second only to the hurt from Bucky being the one to say it to him, the distaste evident in his tone.  And suddenly he felt it welling up in the back of his throat, a dizzy sensation he struggled to breathe through.  All those things done in his name, for a country Steve was terrified to admit he struggled to see as his own some days.  It killed him.

Bucky read that on his face because suddenly he cut himself off with a horrified expression and reached for him.  “Oh god.  I’m sorry, Steve.”

“I fought for my place in the Army,” Steve told him, sinking to the ground.  He barely felt the grass beneath him, or saw Bucky’s alarm as he reached for him. He felt like the world was blacking out around him, focus narrowing on the need to sit. “I figured if I was going to die young it may as well be on the front, in service to my country.  Maybe, if I could save someone else just by standing in the way of a bullet that would be enough.  I didn’t go for glory or for hero status.  I went to die in place of someone else, even if that was just by taking an experimental serum so an able-bodied man wouldn’t have to.”

“Jesus,” he heard Bucky mutter from above him, the sound muffled by the roar in Steve’s ears. He’d never said anything like that out loud before.

“I didn’t,” Steve’s voice cracked. He meant it to be the start of a sentence, but found he couldn’t get the words out.  He didn’t die.  He didn’t mean to be the symbol he was used as.  He didn’t think he could die, anymore. 

He couldn’t breathe.

Steve could feel Bucky’s hands digging into his pockets to find his phone.  “I’m going to call your therapist,” he said.  “See if she can fit you in for an emergency appointment.”

“Why didn’t I?”

“Because you’re the strongest person I’ve ever met,” Bucky started saying in a comforting tone, taking the question as anything other than rhetorical.  His hand was stroking Steve’s back, and he was kneeling in the grass as a barrier between Steve and the world.  Steve wasn’t sure he was grateful for the comfort or the protection.  “Not physically, but through sheer willpower.  And at the core of that strength is goodness.  Ok?  You’re good, Steve.”

x.x.x.

Bucky took Steve out for ice cream as either an apology or a way to comfort him. He’d sat patiently in the waiting room at Steve’s therapist’s office, hastily shoving his phone in his pocket the moment Steve emerged. There was an inscrutable expression on his face that Steve couldn’t read.  Steve felt exhausted, more exhausted than he usually felt after a long mission, and the ice cream was a nice treat, and a good pick-me-up, but it was also getting in the way of a good, long sleep.

Maybe for another 70 years.

He knew, objectively, that Bucky was sorry that he’d caused Steve to have a panic attack.  He still didn’t want to look at Bucky.  He wasn’t angry, but he was a little hurt and ashamed.  He was more ashamed by the idea he was hurt by Bucky’s words - considering part of the reason they got along was a similar viewpoint on social and political issues, he couldn’t help but agree with them -- than he was by Bucky seeing him weak. 

“Can I kiss you?” Bucky asked, his mouth half full of ice cream.

Steve shoved a spoonful in his mouth and looked away so he wouldn’t have to answer, which was answer enough on its own.

“Ok, let’s get you back to your apartment and to bed,” Bucky answered in a firm tone, hailing a cab.  Bucky always took the subway, or when he was really desperate he took a Lyft (or, even more desperate, an Uber).  Steve had never seen him hail a cab before.

He took in the set of Bucky’s shoulders as he got into the cab, the way he was giving Steve the distance of the middle seat, and the way he kept looking at Steve carefully.  “I don’t blame you,” Steve said in a tight tone after a few blocks.

“I’m not looking for you to comfort me, not now,” Bucky replied, sharp.  “I said something I shouldn’t have, something thoughtless and harsh, and I hurt you.  I’m sorry for it.  Today you can have all the space from me you want.”

“I didn’t know that could happen,” Steve answered, setting his jaw and thinking of all the things his therapist had told him about the healing process.  She made his panic attack seem like a good thing, like it was a sign he was connecting with the world again.  Steve wasn’t sure he agreed. 

Maybe it was better if he didn’t reconnect.         

x.x.x.

But then, Steve thought, his hand on Bucky’s bare back, his sleep-warm skin smooth and his breathing even beneath Steve’s palm, he couldn’t begrudge Bucky anything, even if all he had to offer was trying his goddamn best to be a person in this world.

x.x.x.

Bucky found a gym a few blocks away that he started going to a few times a week, and it felt like more of a landmark in their relationship than Bucky’s clothing showing up in Steve’s closet did.  It was one thing for his boyfriend to keep clothing for when he stayed over, it was another thing entirely for him to move his gym to Steve’s neighbourhood.

Until he started working on getting Steve to try out the Beginner’s Yoga class at the same time he did a Piloxing class. 

Steve didn’t recognize that as a real word. He’d had to look it up.

After a few weeks of watching Bucky do simple stretches in the living room before leaving, clearly restricted by the lack of space, but dangerously graceful, Steve’s curiosity got the better of him. 

“You’re in your running clothes,” Bucky noticed when he moved out of holding a pose where his hands were flat on the floor.  Then he grinned at Steve happily.  “You finally giving in to me?”

“I suppose I am.” 

Beginner’s Yoga was… well, it wasn’t hard to hold the poses.  The difficulty was watching the way the instructor moved their limbs and replicating it.  Steve managed, but he noted that he could be better.  Repetition would smooth out the uncertainty in his movements and the way his brain resisted the idea that he could bend like that.

He found, towards the end of the hour, that his muscles quivered into a more relaxed state.  His brain felt fuzzy with relaxation, and he almost dozed off during the final resting pose.  Bucky met him at the entrance, his keen eyes taking Steve in and then going hot.

x.x.x.

Steve liked yoga and the way it made him feel in tune and completely relaxed in his body.  He liked it more for the way his piloxing class made Bucky more aggressive than he usually was, and two out of three times Steve ended the morning writhing on Bucky’s dick.

He came to crave it, both the relaxation and the way it felt to lie down and spread his legs for Bucky. He liked the way Bucky crawled over him, claiming his space and holding Steve open with his thighs while fucking him, driving sharp gasps from Steve’s lungs.

“If I knew you were going to be a pillow princess after yoga I would have taught it to you months ago,” Bucky told him, breathing heavily from the exertion.   “God, I love this about you.  Finger yourself for me?”

It was a while before Steve could get on Urban Dictionary to look up the term, and when he did he found it might not be complimentary.  “Is this a good thing?” he asked Bucky as Bucky was using a set of chopsticks to deftly shove noodles into his mouth.  Steve himself had progressed past the step of having a just-in-case fork.

Bucky looked at his phone and snorted around his food, choking slightly.  “Sure,” he agreed easily.  “Gives us some variety.  I meant it as praise.”

Steve felt his cheeks go warm at that.

x.x.x.

“I learned how to make a lot of casseroles,” Steve was saying, putting hamburger meat into his cart.  “You can find a casserole for anything on Google.”

Bucky made a face at him and picked up a package of cheap hardshell tacos, shaking it with emphasis before putting it in the cart.  “I’m sure your taco casserole is amazing, but you’re going to learn how to make real tacos.  This is food a child could make.”

“SHIELD showed me hamburger helper.”

“Those evil fiends,” Bucky answered easily, slipping his hand into Steve’s.  “The agent they sent to help you shop really was the worst.  Did they also give you mac-n-cheese?”

“And hot dogs.”

“I just had a thought,” Bucky said, throwing lasagna noodles into the cart. Steve was betting that Bucky had no idea how to make lasagna either, but together it wouldn’t be as much of a daunting challenge.  Bucky made anything fun.  “I bet the guy was barely an adult himself.  He’s probably still surviving off microwavable meals and Rice-a-Roni.  Maybe SHEILD should have vetted their adult better.”

“Well they weren’t about to send someone more seasoned with me,” Steve answered.  “That would be a waste of resources.”

“You know what’s a waste of resources?” Bucky retorted.  “Throwing all your food into a casserole.”

“It’s the opposite, actually,” Steve grinned.  “Put a bunch of leftovers into a dish and heat.  It’s the very definition of a casserole.”

Bucky made a gagging noise as Steve pulled him forward, kissing him in the middle of the fresh produce section.  At their small corner bodega that was a small shelf in the front.  Bucky met Steve’s eyes when he pulled back from the kiss and grinned.  Steve tightened his grasp around Bucky’s back and dipped him backwards, not really aiming for a grand movie kiss.  Bucky laughed in his arms, eyes crinkling, his grip strong against the back of Steve’s neck.

Steve pulled him up again and Bucky was still laughing, looking happily at Steve, and that was all Steve wanted.  He wanted to make Bucky happy.

“Let’s go,” Bucky said, running his hand through his hair and looking a little dishevelled.  He moved over towards the cash register and looked at Steve expectantly.

x.x.x.

Going out together for small things became routine.  They grocery shopped, they went for walks, they exercised, and sometimes Bucky came with Steve to the library.  They didn’t do everything together.  It wasn’t entirely codependent.  Steve didn’t follow Bucky to work, or when he went for drinks with friends. He didn’t bring Bucky with him every time he left the apartment, even if Steve’s list of places to go was smaller.

Bucky bought both of them an iced coffee before they headed back to Steve’s apartment.  It was hot enough that Steve felt wilted, hot and sweaty and verging on dehydrated.  “Why did we leave the air conditioning?” Bucky whined, sipping at his frozen drink.

“Because we have a life?”

“Do we? Do we have a life?” Bucky answered, switching hands so he could grasp Steve’s in his.  His hand was chilled and wet from the condensation on the cup.

“I have art classes and yoga classes a few times a week,” Steve reminded him.  “At least I have a life.”

He said it out loud and found himself surprised at the truth of it.  He had Bucky, but he had more than that.  He had a routine that didn’t surround his job.  He had options for entertainment.  He had a boyfriend who bought him new frozen treats to try.  He had a professional to help talk out the problem areas in his life and he didn’t mind admitting it.

“You’re the worst,” Bucky grumbled, leaning his shoulder against Steve’s and then pulling him to a stop.  The person walking on the sidewalk behind them huffed at the abrupt stop.  “Make it up to me?” he said, tilting his face towards Steve.

Steve realized that he was more than happy in singular moments, he was content with his life.

And of course that was the moment Rumlow turned the corner and almost walked into them, bursting Steve’s happiness just with his presence.  Rumlow took them in and something dark passed his expression.  He telegraphed his distaste so clearly that Steve saw it coming before the man even opened his mouth.

“You know, I never took you for a cock sucker, Rogers,” Rumlow said in an almost-friendly tone.  Steve immediately took offense after a moment of reeling backwards from the punch to the gut.  He’d been happy.  Steve had never considered Rumlow as a friend, but out of everyone he’d met at SHIELD they were the closest to it.

Bucky beat Steve to it, squaring his shoulders and looking Rumlow in the eye without backing down.  His face was set in a stony expression that was so at odds with Bucky’s usual demeanor, and there was fury radiating off him.  He should look like an angry kitten batting at someone with its paw, but that wasn’t the impression Steve was getting. Bucky was taller than Rumlow and just as broad, and he stepped forward into Rumlow’s space as someone not afraid of him.

Steve hadn’t noticed that before.  He usually saw Bucky as soft and gentle because that was the way Bucky was with him.  Firm, sometimes, but kind.  He wasn’t seeing any of that in Bucky’s countenance.

“Can you repeat that?” Bucky asked in a chilling tone.

“Whoa,” Rumlow replied in an overly patronizing tone and raising his hands, speaking over Bucky like he wasn’t there.  “I didn’t mean to piss off your pretty little boyfriend, Cap.  I’ll see you at work tomorrow.”  He then turned on his heel and brushed past them.

Bucky deflated.

“What a dick,” he muttered, shoulders slumping and looking a lot more Bucky-like, frowning as he watched Rumlow walk away.  “He creeps me out. He’s aggressive and a bully, and that’s not a good combo.”

“Yeah.” Steve cocked his head to the side, seeing exactly what Bucky saw.  There was a small, small voice in the back of his head that wondered if that meeting had been manufactured.  The thing was that he couldn’t even deny the possibility.  “He creeped me out when I first met him too.”

“Let me guess,” Bucky drawled in a sardonic tone.  “He grows on you?  I should get to know him?”

“No. I’m not sure he does,” Steve admitted, feeling sheepish and inadequate.   “I think I just got inured to it.  I’m sorry.”

“If that guy is SHIELD, I’d hate to see what the bad guys are like,” Bucky commented, letting go of Steve’s hand only so he could wrap his arm around Steve’s waist.  He casually took a sip through the straw, looking sideways meaningfully and meeting Steve’s eye.


	7. Chapter 7

Steve was waiting to deploy on his latest mission, the STRIKE team all around him in the go-room standing by impatiently as the jet they were supposed to take was checked over because of a warning light.  There was a television on in the background that Steve was half-watching as a way to center himself while in a room full of impatient testosterone. 

One of the stories on the news caught his attention.  Mass graves were found in Yemen, and he found himself recognizing the background from one of his older assignments.  He got up and moved a few feet so he could have a better angle at the television, frowning as the news clip changed before he could get a good look at it.

Something unsettled in his gut said he wasn’t wrong, though.

“Rogers,” Rumlow said in that gritty, irritated tone he used with everyone.  “We’re ready if you can tear yourself away from the television for 5 minutes.”

“Coming,” Steve agreed and picked up his pack.  He couldn’t shake the uneasy feeling he had as he got on the plane.  It wasn’t a good way to start a mission, and when everything went bad he found he couldn’t even be surprised.

x.x.x.

Steve was delirious.  He’d read once that the human body reacted in threes – it could survive 3 minutes without oxygen, 3 days without water, and 3 weeks without food.  That didn’t account for the serum.  His body refused to die when drowned and frozen. Being bereft of anything for a few days wouldn’t kill him, but that didn’t mean it was comfortable.  Being trapped without oxygen, let alone any other kind of supplies, was anything but comfortable.

He wondered how the rest of the STRIKE team had faired. Most of them escaped before the explosion that had sealed Steve in with one other agent, and Steve held on to the idea that they’d be rescued as soon as possible.

He’d been hallucinating since his oxygen ran out, his lungs choking on the heavy levels of CO2 in the air, but still trying to intake.  He wondered how long it would take for him to lose consciousness entirely.  When the plane went down in 1945 he’d been aware of the water around him right up until the time it froze, but this? He didn’t know what would happen.  He was trapped, yes, in a sealed room with no air, drifting in and out of awareness, and very much cognisant that he should have died at least 12 hours before.

Anyone else would have.  The agent he was trapped with had.

He pictured Peggy, red lips and proper curls, stepping towards him with her hand reached out.  She twirled, and they were dancing, but that was an old dream, a comfort from the first time.  He pictured Bucky curled up on the couch, feet bare as he read a book, mostly ignoring Steve except to move when Steve sat beside him.

It was comfort and a dream, soundless and weightless.  The only temperature he could feel was cold, not from the air but from within.

He saw it over and over again, Bucky’s face and eyes and the way he bit his bottom lip.  He saw his hands, capable and dexterous, reach for him and Steve struggle to reach back.  As time passed, the more he saw Bucky and the less the vision looked like a hand reaching out as help.  He remembered Bucky in his bed, Bucky holding his hand on the street, he pictured Bucky kissing him in 1945, still as careless and free as he did in 2015.

And then there was a sharp echo of an explosion and he could breathe again.  Hands gently helped him drink water from a skein, and he panted, blinking as he tried to come back to reality and away from the dream he wanted to hang on to.

x.x.x.

“You’ve been missing for almost three days, Cap,” Rumlow told him the moment Steve’s eyes blinked open, getting to his feet in order to pace forward to look down at Steve. Steve had the sensation of being observed, monitored.  It wasn’t comfort Rumlow was offering, it was oversight.  It was a reminder of SHIELD’s power. “How’d you survive in an airless room?”

Steve had had a lot of time to think about it before the hypoxia set in.  He had a lot of time to think of that news clip he’d seen right before leaving, of mass-graves from a successful mission of his a few years before, one that hadn’t left any dead.  It had taken two days of thinking of the mass-graves, and who could have possibly killed all those people, before he remembered Rumlow had seen what he’d been looking at on the television. 

Bucky’s words echoed through his head, and Steve knew.

In the light of the day it was harder to reconcile, but it wasn’t impossible.  He thought about how STRIKE knew where he was, and if they survived, then he also thought of the reasons why it might have taken them 3 days to blow off the door.  “Haven’t you heard?” Steve asked in a wry croak, and didn’t reach for the cup of water sitting beside his bedside table.  “I’m Captain America.  I survived 70 years without air,” he said, meeting Rumlow’s eyes.  It was less a truth and more of a power move.  “What makes you think 3 days would kill me?”

x.x.x.

He was given two weeks off to recuperate from the experience.  Steve had used his newfound appreciation for therapy to tell the SHIELD professional they’d sent in to see him all about how aware he’d been the entire time, using his knowledge to plant the seeds of trauma.

And he was traumatized, just not by being missing and locked in an airless room.  He couldn’t face the idea of going back to work, not with all the questions he had unanswered. He felt itchy beneath his skin, and that directly translated into a liability in the field. So they sent him home, but not before Steve managed to steal a handful of paper files.  They were all so concerned with digital protection that they basically left the file room unmonitored.  It took timing his approach with the cameras, which was easy enough.  SHIELD had trained him well.

And so Steve was free to wander around his own apartment for 2 weeks, feeling trapped and insecure, wondering if he was paranoid and getting papercuts from the impatient way he skimmed the files.

Wondering if he was being watched, even now. 

Bucky kept shooting him concerned looks and it struck Steve that Bucky hadn’t even known he was missing.  It wasn’t unheard of for a mission to last a few days over the projected timeline.  He’d gotten back with his medical leave to a boyfriend who had missed him but hadn’t known the fear or the worry he should have.

It bothered him.  He didn’t like the thought of Bucky not knowing what happened to him until it was public knowledge on the news.  “Two weeks leave?” Bucky asked, frowning down at the hospital band still around Steve’s wrist.  Steve yanked it off and threw it in the trash.  “What happened?”

“I’m fine,” Steve answered. A new thought dawned on him.  If SHIELD wasn’t what he thought it was, then he’d exposed Bucky to them in small pieces.  Rumlow had seen him.  Other people in the apartment building had seen him.  He felt that sensation of being watched again, the walls closing in. He’d never been particularly concerned with whether he was under surveillance, despite sitting through a seminar on the topic, and he wondered who was listening.

“You’re fine?” Bucky asked with an exasperated huff, throwing his arms in the air and stomping into the kitchen muttering to himself.

On the second day Steve closed his laptop with a snap and moved towards his bedroom, pulling his duffle bag out from beneath his bed.  “You said you were off for the next two weeks,” Bucky observed, following Steve into the bedroom, his arms crossed over his chest in annoyance.  “Don’t tell me you’re letting SHIELD have you by the balls so soon after they almost let you die.”

“I am off,” Steve said, snapping open the drawer on his dresser and pulling out a handful of t-shirts.  He dropped them unceremoniously into his duffle bag and proceeded to do the same thing with his sock drawer.  “I can’t stay here for two weeks.  I’m going stir crazy.  Did you know I found a bug in my living room yesterday?”

“Cockroach? I’m surprised you haven’t found any earlier.  This isn’t the best apartment.”

“No,” Steve said in a short tone, feeling frustrated that Bucky didn’t understand, but also knowing he couldn’t tell him.  “I can’t stay here,” he repeated.  “I feel like I’m under a microscope and I’m slowly going insane.”

Bucky watched him pack for a few more moments.  “You’re running away,” Bucky said in a thoughtful tone, head cocked to the side as he stared at Steve. 

“No,” he answered, because he had every intention of coming back.  “But if I have two weeks, I don’t want to spend them here.”  He stared down at his duffle bag and remembered how small the bug had been. The bag had been in and out of missions with him for years.  He left it on the bed and moved through the living room and into the kitchen, grabbing a box of creamed wheat off the shelf.

“I have never seen you eat that,” Bucky observed, looking confused, concerned, and a little judgy.

Steve put his hand into the box and pulled out the sealed bag, then he dug out a stack of $100 bills from the bottom.  Every payday he’d stashed another $100 away, and so he was looking at five thousand dollars in cash hidden around the apartment.  It wasn’t much, and the longer he’d been around the more obvious it was that it wasn’t a lot.  It was even less if Bucky was coming with him.

The idea of hiding physical money under his mattress had been one of the habits he was told was paranoid during his initiation, but Steve was of the opinion that a digital footprint was even more dangerous.  Bucky watched him repeat the motion twice more until there was a pile of cash on the coffee table.

There was a weight in Bucky’s gaze as he stared at the money.  When he looked back to Steve there was something knowing in his eyes of a choice made.  “Ok, let’s go,” he said, instead of arguing.


	8. Chapter 8

It was a tiny cottage off the beach, only available because the seasonal tenants had checked out a week early.  Bucky had paid for it and made the arrangements with his own credit card, not allowing Steve anywhere near the office so he wouldn’t be seen.  Steve had argued against it, but Bucky had told him to save the cash, he might need it.

Bucky was better at going incognito than Steve was, though it felt to Steve like neither of them were particularly adept at it.  He wasn’t sure how much good a baseball cap could do at hiding his face from security cameras, but Bucky plopped one on his head before renting a car – something else he’d taken care of himself while Steve felt like he was twiddling his thumbs.

And Steve wasn’t 100% sure Bucky even knew what he was doing.  Bucky was clever, though, and more than capable of sussing out Steve’s abrupt departure from New York based on the cues.  Bucky threw open the door of the cottage with gusto.  “I’ve always wanted to go on a vacation by the beach,” he said, grinning.  “Never thought it would be in New Jersey, though,” he finished with a face.  “We probably should have headed north.”

It still held the warmth and light of summer, even if there was a deeper chill in the air that said autumn was setting in quickly.  The sun was going down, and Bucky shivered in his t-shirt.  It struck Steve that he and Bucky had dated for the entire summer, transitioning between the chilly weather of the spring into the heat of July and August, and back to an autumn chill.  He dumped the Walmart bags with their supplies on a side table and looked around.

Steve watched with fondness as Bucky frowned at the fireplace and then glanced around for a thermostat.  He looked at all the walls, poked his head into the kitchen, hallway, bathroom, and bedroom, before finally coming back to look at Steve with hopeful eyes. “Do you know how to make a fire?”

“This is where my expertise comes in handy,” Steve answered him, walking over to the fireplace to find matches or a flint.  In truth his little tenement growing up didn’t have a fireplace (but it did have a coal stove) and Steve was rarely the one who lit the campfire during missions during the war, but he had more practical experience with making a fire than Bucky did, who had once told Steve his version of summer camp was hanging out in a recreation center doing crafts while his parents were at work.

“Cottaging is better than camping,” Bucky told him in a prim tone when Steve gently mocked him for it.

Steve snorted and ended up almost dropping the box of matches into the fire, suddenly overcome by the hilarity of Bucky’s statement, and then even more so with the hilarity of Bucky not knowing why he was hilarious.

“What?” Bucky asked, dropping down on to the couch with his usual flare and pouting at not being in on the joke.  There was a small sitting area set up around the fireplace and not a television in sight.  Steve could tell Bucky was enjoying the sight of him crouched and laughing in front of the fireplace, even if he didn’t show it.  It was in the way his eyes swept Steve’s backside, not even bothering to be subtle.

“Cottaging was already made into a verb by the British back in the 40s.  It’s gay slang for hooking up in a bathroom with a stranger.” He looked over and met Bucky’s eye.

“STEVE ROGERS!” Bucky exclaimed, looking delighted.  “That’s filthy.  Did – which one was British? – Farnsworth? tell you that?”

“Monty wasn’t really the type to frequent places like that,” Steve said easily.  “Whereas the USO Show stopped in London for almost a month before heading to the front, and _I am_.”

Bucky squinted at him.  “I don’t believe you,” he decided.  “By that point you were balls deep in love with Peggy Carter.”

Steve shrugged, a bit playfully, telling Bucky he could believe what he wanted, and worked on getting the fire to fully take with another log.  It crackled into something healthier than a wisp of smoke and Steve stood, walking over to Bucky and sitting on the couch next to him.  Bucky was still looking at him like he was something to figure out.

“But you weren’t balls deep in Peggy Carter, were you?” he mused.

“Hey,” Steve said, slightly chiding but mostly amused. 

“No, the two of you had a slowburn going on of flirtation and mutual respect, and at that point she would have been with Colonel Mustard and dem boys.”

“Also not his name,” Steve pointed out, hiding a laugh because Bucky’s grasp on WWII history was whatever he’d learned in a junior high history class in Brooklyn.  He could name the time and date Steve’s plane went down, but recited it with an eye roll.  Steve appreciated that in a small way, and it annoyed him in equal measure.

Colonel Mustard and dem boys.  Jesus.  Bucky was grinning like he knew how funny he was, and Steve couldn’t help but give in to it, closing his eyes and shaking with amusement.

“I don’t care if it’s true or not,” Bucky told him while easily moving on to Steve’s lap, knees pressed against the seat cushions and his arms framing Steve’s head.  Steve put his hand against Bucky’s waist, the movement as natural as breathing now.  Bucky moved in to kiss him, and it wasn’t the slow and teasingly gentle kisses they usually shared on Steve’s couch at home.  It was heated from the start, Bucky practically panting into Steve’s mouth the moment they touched.  “Fuck,” he muttered, pulling back just enough so he could look Steve in the eye, tilt his chin up, and kiss Steve again.

Steve held on and kissed him back. 

There was something normal in the way Bucky hurried through the steps of getting them off, something that eased the tightness in Steve’s chest.  He felt like he could fully breathe again for the first time since his last mission, even as he felt breathless at the way Bucky pulled their clothes out of the way just enough so their cocks were bare and he could get them both off.

“It’s so fucking hot,” Bucky told him, whispering in his ear as he slid his cock against Steve’s.  “I’ll never get that image out of my head.  You all blond and shiny and new, on your knees on a cum soaked floor in some backroom in London getting your first taste of cock as some guy whose been dead for over 50 years used your mouth.”

“That’s not…” Steve started to deny.  He was turned on, amused, and indignant.  Bucky had that effect on a man.

“Shhhh,” Bucky said, stopping him.  “Let me have this.  Tell me later.”

“Ok,” Steve agreed with a laugh, turning Bucky over on the couch so he was flat on his back.

x.x.x.

No matter what Bucky said, it wasn’t a vacation.  Steve still woke up at his usual time, easing himself out of the unfamiliar bed, getting ready for the day, and pulling out the SHIELD files.  He wasn’t sure why he thought that reading them over each morning would give him a new perspective on them, but he couldn’t stop.  It felt like there was something just out of his reach but so close it was taunting him.

By the time Bucky woke up, Steve had them hidden again and was in the living room stretching through some of the easier yoga moves.  It helped him feel energized for the day to move.

Bucky paused to watch him in the doorway.  He didn’t say a word, just continued to the small kitchen for coffee.  “This cottage has more space than your apartment,” he pointed out, taking a sip.  “Adjust your back leg farther back.  Feel the way it makes it easier for balance?”

Steve hummed back at him while making the adjustment.

“Want to go swimming?” Bucky asked, crossing over to the small screen door.  “It looks like a beautiful day.  There won’t be many more of those.”

He sounded sad, but when he turned to look at Steve his mouth was curved into a mischievous smile.  “We don’t have swimsuits, whatever shall we do?”

x.x.x.

Bucky waded through the water, his jeans rolled up to his knees, completely unconcerned that one of them was sliding down and the hem was getting soaked.  His hair looked a lighter colour in the sun, sticking up in that way Steve never understood how he managed it.  It was chilly enough that Steve could feel the temperature, but Bucky was laughing, his face tilted up towards the sun.  He was wearing the sunglasses that he liked to call ‘douchetastic’ but that Steve thought made him look reckless and a little bad.

He’d always had a tiny thing for aviators during the war.

"The water is warmer than the air is," he called out, reaching down and breaking a wave with his fingers.  He then flicked them at Steve.  "Come on super soldier.  Aren't you impervious to this?"

Steve smiled at him and ruthlessly suppressed a sympathetic shiver.  He might be impervious but that didn’t mean he didn’t remember every second of the freezing Arctic water.  "I'm just taking some time to enjoy the view."

Bucky pulled his sunglasses down far enough to wink at him.  "Such a line.  Remember the moment and take a fucking picture or two, one for Instagram and one for your secret sex fantasies, and then come join me."

"Are you going to pose?"

"For what?"

"My secret sex fantasy."

"What do you want me to do?" Bucky asked, coy smile and his tongue stuck between his teeth.  "Let me guess, be myself?"

"No, that's for Instagram.  I'd rather you take your pants off and show me those bruises on your thighs from last night."

Bucky paused.  "There are children here, Steve!"

It was a private beach, or private enough on a weekday in September.  "There are not,” Steve argued.

Bucky laughed, as carefree and wild as the way the waves picked up with the heavy winds.  He was like a force of nature, as beautiful as the incoming hurricane, and to Steve he was just as dangerous.  Steve remembered thinking Bucky was fey once, but Bucky had proved himself to be so real it was painful sometimes.  He looked at Steve, amused and teasing as he lifted his shirt above his head, throwing it towards the shore.  Steve had to move forward to catch it before it fell in the water.

Bucky didn’t say anything but he looked smug as the rough waves crested over the top of Steve’s shoes. 

Steve looked at him, taking in the sharp line of his hipbones and the way his nipples were pebbling in the cold.  He loved Bucky’s body and envied him the effort he clearly put in to enjoy the same successes Steve obtained through the serum. 

He deliberately moved his hand over and dropped Bucky’s shirt into the water.

Bucky let out a scandalized gasp, though he should have seen it coming, and launched himself at Steve.

Steve grabbed him by the hips, a hopeless gesture as they both tumbled into the cresting waves.  Bucky emerged first, water dripping from his hair.  He was laughing, joyously and completely unfettered.  "Oh my god," he gasped, pushing his hair out of his face and sputtering as another wave crashed over them.  "Fuck you ocean!"

"I love you," Steve said.

Bucky stared at him, gaping in shock. He looked genuinely surprised. "What?" He started to say, only to get a face full of salt water as another wave crashed over them hard enough to move them a few inches closer to the shore.

"I do."

"Oh.  Steve, it's not smart to love me."

Steve reached out and grasped Bucky’s pant leg, the only part of him he could reach.  "I've been reckless my entire life, now isn't any different.  If anything, I'm more sure of you than I've been of anything in a long time."

Bucky stared at him, and if Steve had to label his expression it would be heartbroken.  It didn’t make any sense.  Then Bucky sat up and reached for him, cradling Steve’s face in his hands.  “I’m going to hurt you.”

He sounded so sure of it.  They observed each other for a moment.  Steve thought about Bucky’s compassion in the way he booted Steve in the ass to find the help he needed to be more at peace with himself.  He thought about how since Bucky he wasn’t living with dark corners in his mind as much anymore, and it wasn’t just because of the man but in the way Bucky had dragged him into experiencing new things with open eyes and contagious joy.  “I don’t think you can,” Steve told him. 

Bucky leaned in with his hands still cradling Steve’s face.  “I want you to be happy,” he said, hand braced on Steve’s chest over his heart, just as another wave crashed into them.

x.x.x.

Bucky’s words echoed through Steve’s mind, far after they’d gone to bed.  Bucky was curled against his side, a little restless as he dozed without fully sleeping, as though he recognised Steve’s stony stillness for what it was.  A few weeks before and Steve would have gladly admitted to being happy, or at least on his way towards it, but he wasn’t sure he could say that anymore.

"Something's wrong," Steve said out loud, looking up at the ceiling of their rented cottage.  The shutters were banging against the windows.  Someone from the rental company had stopped by in the afternoon to make the place storm-ready, which was good because one of the things Steve and Bucky had in common was that they were city born and bred and didn’t know the shutters could be latched closed.

Steve, personally, thought they were decorative pieces on the side of the house.

"It's just the storm," Bucky told him in a sleepy tone, rolling into Steve so he was curled against his side, soft and warm and so real that Steve sometimes had to pause in wonder and reflect on why he was in Steve’s bed.  He tucked himself against Steve, one arm around his waist, and blinked at him in the dark.  He could probably tell how tense and rigidly Steve was holding himself.

"No,” Steve said in a quiet voice. “With SHIELD.  I think something's wrong."

Bucky was silent for a long moment. The silence was potent, Bucky’s body language shifting between lax to aware.  "Any idea what?" he asked, serious and intent.

"I don't know if I should even be telling you this," Steve admitted, moving closer so his mouth was close enough to Bucky's shoulder that he'd be able to feel the words.  It almost felt the same as hiding his face in his mother's hair as a child. It was trust and comfort and so many things Steve had done without for years. "Things aren't adding up.  I feel like I'm being watched, always.  There was a mission – Last year we were in – I saw a mass grave on the news and – I don't know how to explain it.  People died, but that wasn't what happened when I was there.  I think the team that came in after me to clean up actually... I didn't think SHIELD was in the practice of that kind of cleaning up.  The mission report I have access to doesn’t mention anything about it."

"Steve, that's... have you brought this up with anyone else?"

"No.  Am I being paranoid?  I needed to get away from the city to think, but it seems clearer to me out here that something is off."

"Don't tell anyone else," Bucky warned, moving over so they were face to face.  He reached out and wrapped his arm around Steve. It wasn’t a loose, sleepy hold. It was urgent. "You understand me? Not your therapist. Not your coworkers. No one."

Steve nodded and swallowed heavily. He hadn’t expected Bucky to believe him.  He thought he’d tell Bucky and Bucky would make a joke about him being a paranoid old man, laugh it off, and warn him to be careful just in case. He was expecting reassurance, and like always Bucky surprised him.

“If you’re right we’re both in a lot of danger,” Bucky said, turning to look at the window.  The sound of the rain hitting against the shutters should be calming.  Bucky sometimes made Steve listen to water-related meditation soundtracks, and liked to joke the last time Steve had held still was when he was frozen in the ocean so maybe an hour of listening to the rain would put him to sleep.

Bucky looked concerned. The only light in the room was filtering through underneath the doorframe from the hallway outside. It didn’t do much to illuminate his face, but Steve could see well enough in the dark that he could tell Bucky was frowning.

“I’ll do whatever it takes to protect you,” Steve promised.

Bucky rolled his eyes, breaking the tense mood.  “Is this where you threaten to break up with me?” he asked with grin, pushing Steve back so his head was on the pillow and Bucky was sitting on his stomach.  “For my own good?”

“I hadn’t thought of that yet.”

“And you’re not going to,” Bucky told him, leaning in to kiss him.  Bucky was always a surprise and a revelation, right down to the ways he could anticipate how Steve needed to be kissed.  It was hard and possessive, Bucky’s grip on his shoulders strong enough that it would take Steve effort to move away from him, not that he’d ever wanted to try.  He’d been pinned on the mat in training exercises with less strength than his boyfriend exuded when he was reminding Steve who he was in bed with.

And why.

x.x.x.

Steve hadn’t been able to sleep.  He’d napped for about an hour after Bucky had made him come so hard it felt like it was leaking out of his brain, and then he’d quietly slipped out of bed, tucking a pillow against Bucky’s back so he still felt cocooned and didn’t realize Steve had left him to sleep.  Bucky woke at the slightest touch, like Steve did, but they were used to each other by now that it barely registered.

He padded out to the living room, bare feet against the cold wood floors. The rain was still coming down hard, but the wind had eased enough that the rattling of the shutters no longer made the entire cottage feel like it was quaking.  It felt like the storm was passing, bringing with it the possibility of another beautiful sunny day.

Metaphorically, Steve pictured the eye of the storm.  He was standing on a precipice waiting for the worst part to come.  Maybe, a more accurate assessment was that the storm hadn’t broke for him yet, but he could see it coming on the horizon, dark clouds and portents of doom.  Steve made himself a pot of coffee and let it brew as he grabbed a quick shower and dressed.  He knew he wouldn’t get back to sleep, and it was more like ripping off a bandaid than anything else.  Looking over documents that might implicate SHIELD in a mass murder seemed like the kind of thing he shouldn’t do in his underwear.

He’d already looked them over multiple times, but there was a niggling warning in his mind that they were important.  He’d tried to let it go but couldn’t.  As far as evidence went, it was a small blip on what seemed like a pristine record, but it made his instincts and gut feeling rebel and throw up intense warning signs.

An hour later Steve was realizing that he needed a lot more to go on than the files he had access to and he’d learned enough about technology to know that sitting in front of Google and searching the locations and dates he’d been the last few years probably would send up a red flag somewhere.  He was getting frustrated with it all.

“You’re dressed again?” Bucky grumbled from the hallway, making a bee-line for the coffee.  He’d been cold enough to pull his jeans over the boxers and t-shirt he’d been sleeping in, and his feet were bare.  Steve bit his tongue not to observe that Bucky was dressed too.  “I thought we talked about how every day didn’t need to be met with the sun.  Do we have milk?”

“Not unless you grabbed some in the store,” Steve answered, frowning down at the papers in his hand as though his disappointment would make them give up the answers faster.  It worked on people sometimes. 

Bucky took a healthy gulp of the coffee, made a disgusted sound, and then topped up his mug.  “It’s fucking early,” he grumbled, dropping the mug on the coffee table and perching beside Steve on the arm of his chair.  He ran his hand through Steve’s hair and dropped a kiss on the side of his forehead.  “You’re such a dork, this is a vacation,” he reminded Steve, as though the two of them didn’t have a deep conversation at two in the morning.

He sat there leaning against Steve, and it took him a few moments to realize Bucky was looking at the papers over his shoulder.  Most of them were confidential, and Steve felt a small urge to hide them away, but if what he as beginning to suspect was true and they were already a heavily edited version for his eyes only, then it hardly mattered who saw them.

It hardly mattered now that Steve had shared his fears out loud.

Steve shuffled back around to the picture of the mass grave that had been all over the news – just not in America.  It was the first thing that made him pause.

“Wait,” Bucky said when Steve bypassed one of his own files about a mission to Bratislava two summers ago. “I remember something around that time.  It wasn’t on the news but I came across it on social media.  Hold on.”  He pulled his phone out of his pocket to do a quick search.

“Is that safe?” Steve asked. “I’ve been wanting to do my own research but I’m scared to give too much away.”

Bucky looked at him, and Steve couldn’t place what he was thinking.  “I’m only doing the one, and I’m going at it circuitous, but no, it might not be.  Just give me a minute, I’m scrolling through someone’s blog.”  He leaned forward and grabbed his coffee mug from the table, taking another hardy swig of it followed by a grimace.  One minute became two.  Two minutes became five, and Steve was starting to get impatient when Bucky went “ah ha!” and held out his phone for Steve to see.

It was an article about a missing scientist that linked directly to an article about a body found, tortured.  It expounded on the scene in grizzly detail, listing it as a suspected assassination.  Steve wasn’t surprised, not really, by the idea of an assassin killing someone, but what chilled his blood was the fact it was the same woman he’d been sent to protect three months previously.  He’d left her safe, in a new country with a new identity.

Then he’d filed his report on it.  For SHIELD’s eyes only.

“I…” Steve started to say and broke it off with a deep breath.  How many? He wondered.  How many of his missions, where he thought he’d done good, had ended like this?  He read the details again to commit them to memory and stopped at one, gripping Bucky’s phone so tightly that it creaked beneath his fist.

“What?” Bucky asked.

“It’s nothing,” Steve answered with a forced laugh, and then pointed to the line, even though Bucky had no way of knowing what it meant to Steve. “It’s… just a coincidence, right?”

“What is?”

Steve answered him, but it felt more like he was answering the question for himself.  “That particular method of torture used to be Hydra’s favorite.”


	9. Chapter 9

He heard it first, the sound of a motor approaching at a speed that was far too fast for the mouth of the inlet.  Bucky was up to his ankles in the water, looking for shells and cool pieces of glass, and relaxed with his jeans rolled up to his knees.  He didn’t have Steve’s worries on his shoulders, or at least didn’t realize the weight of them even if he did seem to understand they were present.  He’d insisted that they continue with their vacation, bypassing all of Steve’s need for confrontation by rationally reminding Steve that he had two weeks to digest and plan while Bucky got in some quality beach time.

Steve regretted allowing them to go for a walk so far from the car and anything that could serve as a weapon.

Steve looked towards the water, unable to see anything yet, but feeling a prickle go up his spine.  It felt like all his hair follicles stood on end, his nerves screaming to move.

“Run,” Steve yelled at Bucky, grabbing him out of the water and pushing him forward.  He could feel more than see that they were being closed in on, rapidly, and Bucky couldn’t be standing next to him when the net closed.  Danger was always an instinct that Steve listened to, possibly because he’d never been very good at self-preservation and so when that kicked in, it was a good sign that things were about to get fucked up.

“But,” Bucky said, and then got a good look at Steve’s face.  It was difficult to hear the motor over the sound of the waves and the ambient noise of standing on the beach, but Bucky’s head whipped towards the ocean, his eyes going wide and his face pale just before the motorboat pulled into the inlet and was clearly visible.

“Run,” Steve repeated, reaching to give Bucky a nudge, but it was almost needlessly because Bucky was already taking off down the sand, running faster than Steve had ever seen him go, despite the soft sand beneath his feet.  For a moment, Steve allowed himself to watch Bucky disappear to safety before a speedboat beached itself less than five yards away.  A humvee pulled up on the other side, pulling up right at the edge of the sand and flattening the reeds between the sand and the boardwalk.

The net closed, and Steve felt that familiar anger course through him, quieting the panic in his brain.  He couldn’t see Bucky anymore, but he could see the men filing on to the beach, their black uniforms and movements so very familiar.

He’d trained beside them for years.

“What is this?” Steve asked the one in charge, knowing who it was even before he heard the voice.

“You’re going to have to come with us, Captain,” Rumlow told him, easily, like they hadn’t fought side by side for years. Like he didn’t know what Steve was capable of. 

Or, maybe, because he did..

Steve narrowed his eyes and considered his options. Of course they’d come at him by land and sea.  He resisted the urge to look up to see if there was a helicopter, knowing already that he’d feel and hear that if it was close enough for that.  Rumlow knew exactly what Steve was capable of.  “I don’t think so,” he said.  “You’re showing your hand a little early, aren’t you?”

“I think it’s just on time.”

x.x.x.

Steve fought.  He fought for himself, he fought to keep them distracted from searching out Bucky, and he fought for all those wasted years of thinking something was wrong with him because he couldn’t connect to SHIELD.  It seemed like one of those moments of clarity, realizing that Hydra had been keeping him right where they wanted him, as a puppet they could use as their public face of goodness.

That made Steve furious more than anything.

It took 3 taser sticks aimed at his ribs at the same time to bring him to his knees in a move they’d trained on the same way Steve had trained through practice scenarios with them. They put thick metal cuffs on him that creaked when he tested them, and he knew they wouldn’t hold him for long.  He stayed for a moment, on his knees, pretending at submission as he stared up at Rumlow, furious and already calculating not just how to get out but also how to bring Rumlow down with him.

“Hold on,” Rumlow said to him and put his finger against his earpiece, listening.  Then he addressed Steve directly.  “I suggest you don’t do what you’re thinking of doing.  We have your pretty boyfriend and I’ll personally see to it that he dies at my hand if you don’t come quietly.”

Steve stared at Rumlow, trying to find the crack in his claim.  Bucky wasn’t like them.  He didn’t fight for a living, and as much as Steve wanted to believe Rumlow was lying - and he wanted to believe that more than anything - he also would be naive to think that Bucky managed to get away.

Steve refused to be naive anymore.  He refused not to look at Rumlow and see the worst, to see the person that had been barely concealed beneath the surface. Looking at Rumlow, he could see how this was a good lie, a way to keep Steve down and captured.  “Prove it,” he dared.

“I don’t think you want that.” There was a cruel expression on Rumlow’s face, a pleasure to it.  Then he spoke into his comm.  “Cut off a finger and bring it--”

“No!” Steve yelled, surging to his feet.  He was moving on instinct, needing to protect.

“Ah ah ah,” Rumlow chided, resting his taser against Steve’s heart.  “Come with us.”

Steve rethought his plan, adapting it to fit finding Bucky as his first priority.  He couldn’t lose Bucky.  Steve would have to be enough against the STRIKE team.  They might be using his weakness against him, but he knew their weaknesses too.  He knew Carter’s bad knee and Ford’s inability to pivot left.  He knew Rumlow’s arrogance.

Steve gave a single nod, feeling his anger surge through his limbs.  He felt like he could easily break the cuffs and take down the rest of the Strike team with that incentive. He narrowed his eyes at Rumlow and took a step, moving towards the road.  He’d let them take him to Bucky and then he’d kill them all with the same prejudice that brought him through Nazi Germany the last time he stood against Hydra.

The look on Rumlow’s face was the smug expression of a man who’d just gotten his way, and Steve was looking forward to punching it off.

They all turned at the sound of gravel behind them.  Rumlow looked triumphant.  Steve’s anger was barely held in check by the handcuffs at the sight of one of SHIELD’s SUVs approaching.  It wasn’t as decked out as the Humvee, and Steve suspected there was a special surprise waiting for him in the back of that.  It came in the direction of the cottage, and Steve was lost to the mental image of Bucky running back to safety and getting ambushed.

Then SUV accelerated and hit the three of them going over 50 mph.

It hit his legs hard, forcing him on to the bonnet and then up over the windshield.  The glass collapsed under the weight of him hitting it and the SUV kept accelerating, not stopping as it drove over the two STRIKE team members who had been trying to force him into the back of the transport vehicle.

Steve rolled off the bonnet, landing hard on the gravel.  He groaned under the weight of the pain, lifting his head just enough to see the SUV finally stop.  Bullets were flying from the back of the Humvee, STRIKE responding to the sudden strike.

The door swung open.  “Get in,” Bucky yelled at him. He looked fine and whole and not like someone who had just been in a fight, and Steve recognised the lie for the fear tactic it was.  Hydra never had Bucky.

He forced his limbs to move, crawling into the front seat.  Bucky was driving away before the door fully closed behind him.  Steve breathed heavily.

“It was dangerous for you to come back for me,” Steve told him, flexing his feet.  He’d been sure at least one of his tibia had shattered on impact with the SUV, but that didn’t seem to be the case.  He was a little sore and bruised, but everything was intact, and the cuffs had pulled off with minimal strain.  Even the tenderness would be gone in less than an hour.  “Did you have any trouble stealing the SUV?”

“Appears not, doesn’t it?” Bucky told him, flashing him a grin.  His hands were gripped easily around the steering wheel, at odds with the tenseness Steve could sense in the way he was holding his jaw.  The grin was a misdirect.  “You told me to run and then you didn’t follow. You don’t get to throw yourself under the bus like that,” Bucky told him.  “That’s stupid.  I’m so angry at you right now I can’t look at you.”

“I’m sorry,” Steve lied.

Bucky made a sharp noise through his nose and then pulled into the parking lot of the local Walmart.  Steve had been there so many times over the last few days picking up supplies Bucky thought they needed, including a carton of cream for his coffee, that he could tell where they were despite the windshield in front of his face being shattered.  “We need to change vehicles quickly,” he said, unbuckling, gesturing towards windshield.

Steve wondered how Bucky had any more visibility than he did.

“Stealing something here is going to be more challenging than waiting for them to leave with the keys in the ignition.”  

“Not really,” Steve told him as he got out, already eying an older truck across the parking lot, rolling up his sleeves as he approached, his eyes already searching the area for something he could use to get the door open. They were right in front of Walmart. Worst case he’d just walk in the store and buy something.  Of course, with STRIKE on their tail, that might not be the best bet.  “Leave that one to me.”

“It’s really hot you know how to do this,” Bucky told him.  He’d been skeptical when watching Steve jimmy open the lock, but his expression had gone warm when Steve pulled out the wiring beneath the dash and started sorting through it.  “Are you going to tell me you were a car thief before the war?  I don’t know if my brain could take it.”

“Not before the war,” Steve answered, pausing what he was doing for a second so he could meet Bucky’s eyes.

“Ah.”

x.x.x.

They crossed state lines twice before Bucky pulled into a motel off the highway.  “Let me handle this one,” he told Steve, unbuckling himself and getting out.  He pulled the baseball cap he’d stolen from a gas station down over his eyes and moved towards the front counter. 

Maybe Steve was watching too much television with Bucky, but he would have expected more squalor from somewhere that took cash for the night with no questions asked; the room seemed clean and well-cared for, if more than two decades out of date.  That didn’t really bother Steve.  He was also more than two decades out of date.

Bucky didn’t speak to him as he took his gas station supplies into the bathroom for a shower; and when he came back out he collapsed face-first onto the bed.

He was sleeping before Steve could find the words he wanted to say.  He wanted to apologize for dragging Bucky into this.  He wanted to thank him for sticking around, and he wanted more than anything to leave him behind and keep moving.  He also didn’t know how to do that and also ensure that STRIKE didn’t deliberately target Bucky as Steve’s weakness.

There was a tiny, very small part of him that wished he’d never met Bucky and fallen in love with him.  That part was fear-fueled and he wasn’t listening to it, but it hurt that it was there and that maybe Bucky was thinking something similar.

He ended up watching Bucky sleep for an hour, sitting on the other double bed in the room, vigilant to every sound in the motel, the parking lot, and the highway.  It felt like the end.  After an hour Bucky’s eyes opened and he rolled to his feet, his eyes meeting Steve’s.

“You should nap,” Bucky told him, shoving his legs back into his jeans and taking a seat at the small rickety table.

“I should leave,” Steve answered, watching Bucky take out a loaf of bread and start smearing peanut butter over it.

“Leave?” Bucky echoed in a flat tone, folding the bread in half and then biting off a good chunk of it.

“I don’t know any other way to keep you safe,” Steve admitted, clenching his hands in his lap and feeling helpless.  “Maybe I should just turn myself in to them.  Walk into SHIELD’s front door before they have a chance to retaliate.  There are dangerous people in the world who work for SHIELD.  For Hydra.”

“Don’t be stupid,” Bucky told him, mouth full of peanut butter.  He was talking thickly around it and looking unhappy about it, but he looked even more unhappy at Steve’s proclamation. 

Steve sighed.  “Hydra has resources you can’t even imagine,” he said instead.

Bucky looked at him and stood, arms crossed over his chest.  He was radiating fury.  “You walk through SHIELD’s doors you’re not coming back out, and if you think that’s going to stop anything… I’m in it now.  Walking away from me won’t keep me safe, but I might be able to keep you safe if you trust me.”

“I don’t want you to get hurt.”

“No one is going to hurt me.” Bucky sounded confident for someone who had absolutely no survival instincts.

Steve put his head in his hands and tried to breathe through his terror.  “There’s this man,” he said.  “A ghost story.  He’s killed so many SHIELD agents, and I can’t help but worry I’ve exposed you to him.”

“I’m not worried about The Winter Soldier!” Bucky yelled.

Steve stopped.

He looked up at Bucky feeling like he was viewing him through the distortion of glass.

“Steve,” Bucky continued in a gentle tone as he knelt in front of him.  “This is happening because you were close, so close to uncovering what’s going on with SHIELD and Hydra.  They want you dead, and The Winter Soldier doesn’t work for them.”

“What?” Steve asked reflexively, but his brain was working through everything Bucky was telling him.  He thought of Bucky driving the SUV, not like a man who had just run over 3 people, but with the ease of someone who hadn’t.  He wondered how Bucky had gotten the SUV.

Bucky continued talking while Steve’s world was falling apart.  “He’s not Hydra, and he’s not SHIELD.  There’s another organization that’s doing damage control for them both, and he works for them.  That doesn’t mean they won’t send a competent assassin, just don’t focus so much on it being The Winter Soldier.”

Steve stared at him.  There was a look on Bucky’s face that he couldn’t read, closed off and furious.  Removed.  Then Steve parsed his words.  “What do you know that I don’t?”

Bucky sighed and deflated.  He took Steve’s hands in his and held them against his chest.  Steve resisted the urge to pull away violently, because the whole conversation was returning to him starting with the line ‘I might be able to keep you safe.’ Bucky wasn’t… Bucky. “Oh Steve,” he said.  “You don’t know anything, but you almost had it.  For the past twenty years SHIELD has been infiltrated by Hydra.”

Everything jolted to a sudden stop.

“What?” Steve laughed in disbelief, pulling away from Bucky and getting to his feet.  His mind felt like it was working a mile a minute, but not in a good way.  There were still barriers blocking his understanding, stalling him, making him repeat thought processes he couldn’t think his way around.

“Peggy would never…” he said, looking down at Bucky.

“No, she wouldn’t,” Bucky agreed, standing out of his crouch so they were facing each other. “It started small, with mail clerks and new recruits, but those people eventually moved up.  SHIELD isn’t what you think it is.  Hydra has a strong foothold on the organization, going right up to the top now.”

Steve sat down heavily, but he didn’t question how Bucky had known.  Since he confided in Bucky that evening in bed in their rental cottage, the puzzle pieces of their life together had started subtly warping until Steve could see the picture in front of him without fully acknowledging it.  Bucky was telling him now, that was the main thing.  He wasn’t hiding it, wasn’t running or letting Steve leave him behind without knowing the wiser.

And he wasn’t Hydra.

“So you work for the people against them?” he asked, because he had to be sure.

“Yeah,” Bucky answered and knelt again, his hands on Steve’s knees.  “We should go.  We’re still in danger. I promise I’ll get you to safety.  Can you trust me for just a while longer?”

x.x.x.

They didn’t even get beyond the hotel parking lot.

Steve didn’t know why he was surprised, but he was.  It had already been a hell of a 24 hours and he always knew it was a bad idea to underestimate Rumlow.  At least it seemed like it was only Rumlow this time, his car parked and the door still open in his haste to intersect them. 

He’d reached for Bucky first and Steve froze in fear.  He might not know who Bucky was anymore, but he knew that less than two days before he’d told him that he loved him.  That didn’t go away with one ill-timed confession.  Steve wasn’t sure if he was even capable of hating Bucky, no matter what secrets he’d kept.

“Well, well, Cap’s little piece on the side,” Rumlow sneered, his gun trained directly at Bucky’s face but his eyes on Steve.  Steve drew to a stop immediately.  “I wouldn’t move if I were you, Rogers. Not if you value his pretty little head.”

“You certainly call me pretty a lot,” Bucky told Rumlow with a shrug, not blinking at the gun.  “Latent attraction?”

Steve blinked.

Jesus Christ Bucky.

Rumlow looked like he was more likely to pistol-whip Bucky than he was to shoot him in that second.  Then he steadied himself and narrowed his eyes as though he was going to kill Bucky first and worry about needing him as a bargaining chip later.

Steve felt his heart leap into his throat. He’d seen what Rumlow was capable of.  He’d especially seen what Rumlow was capable of with that look on his face, the one that said he was going to hurt someone and take pleasure from it.  He was closer to Bucky than Steve was, and he didn’t think Rumlow was bluffing. Steve raised his hands in surrender. “Leave him alone. I’ll come with you peacefully.”

Bucky turned to look at him, that surprised expression back from when they’d first gotten together that said that Steve surprised him.

“I think it’s too late for that,” Rumlow said, his finger curving in slightly on the trigger in a way that was painfully familiar to Steve.

“I think you’re both forgetting something,” Bucky answered in a relaxed tone, his hands up placatingly in front of him.  The movement was enough to get Rumlow’s attention on him. He was narrowing his eyes when Bucky struck out with his hand so rapidly that Steve barely followed the motion.  If he wasn’t looking right at Bucky he might have missed it.  It was a move to disarm, and one Rumlow hadn’t been able to outmanoeuvre.

That jolted Steve’s brain into awareness. He’d never seen Rumlow lose his weapon before, not in training and not in the field.  Steve had managed it a few times with great difficulty, but Bucky did it easily, moving his wrist in a way that made Rumlow’s hold loosen so Bucky could take the gun from his hand.  The move made Rumlow pull the trigger, the bullet hitting grazing Steve’s bicep before burying itself the wall of the alley on Steve’s left.  

Bucky moved with the gun like it was an extension of himself, handling it easily as he turned it on its owner.  “A side piece is a weapon.”

“You,” Rumlow gasped, staring up the barrel of his own gun.

“Me,” Bucky agreed as he pulled the trigger.  He stared down at Rumlow without dropping his weapon, looking dispassionate as he made sure the man was dead.  He then looked up and met Steve’s eyes while putting the gun away.  “So…” he drawled.  “They can send whoever they want after us.”

Steve watched Bucky carefully as he stripped off his sweater and then the t-shirt under it.  He ripped the white cotton and reached for Steve’s hand.  The wound through his arm had already stopped bleeding and was starting to heal, but Steve let him work at rolling up the remains of Steve’s t-shirt, removing the blood, and binding it.

“He might not be alone,” Bucky said, though they’d both seen Rumlow get out of the car.  “STRIKE works as a team, but Rumlow can be a loose cannon. Goes off on his own sometimes when he feels like he knows better than everyone else. It was always going to get him killed some day.  Everyone knew it.”

“You’re The Winter Soldier,” Steve guessed instead of answering, and knew he was right when Bucky didn’t laugh, he just continued looking seriously at the bullet wound he’d inadvertently caused.  Steve remembered how defensive Bucky had gotten over the man, the furious tick in his jaw when Steve had described The Winter Soldier as a Hydra boogey-man.  He remembered how sure Bucky had been that he wouldn’t be the one sent after them.

Jesus Fuck.  No wonder.

Bucky looked up at him through his lashes.  “Once you know there’s something to look for, all the walls of the box just fall away for you, don’t they?” Bucky sighed, but his mouth was turning up a bit.  “It’s something I didn’t expect from you, but it makes sense.  I’ve seen some of your strategy plans from the war.  You’re lucky in a way that in the last 70 years Captain America has become this farce of a yes-man.  They would have tried to kill you off a long time ago if they’d remembered what you were.”

Steve’s boyfriend, the only person he’d met and became attached to, who was normal and kind and fun, was one of the deadliest and most feared assassins in the world.  And he’d just complimented Steve?  “What am I?”

“Resistance,” Bucky said with a smirk, and then brought Steve’s hand to his mouth for a quick kiss.  Steve wasn’t sure what his reaction to that should be, but his heart beating as rapidly and nervously as it had the first time they met probably wasn’t it.


	10. Chapter 10

Bucky pulled through the drive-thru for a McDonalds around 3 am and ordered 4 combo meals, a coffee, and 6 bottles of water.  He put it all on his credit card, which Steve was beginning to realize might be an expense account and might also be safe to use for reasons other than ‘I don’t think they ever knew my name? It’s better than using yours.’

He handed all the paper bags to Steve.  “There’s a tablet in one of them. You should read the files on it.”

“Where are we going?” Steve finally asked.  He’d gotten into the car with Bucky and had trusted him enough for that.  Bucky wasn’t acting any differently than he had since STRIKE showed up, focused and angry, cold in a way he usually wasn’t.  Steve had put that down to stress, but now he could see the confidence to it too in the way Bucky adapted and reacted and refused to let Steve drive for long.

“Back to Bethesda,” Bucky told him.  “We should be there in a few hours.  Catch up on the files so I don’t have to catch you up myself.”

That sounded like an actual order.  One Steve found himself following.  The files had some damning evidence in them, videos and audio clips.  Steve considered whether they were faked or not, but he found himself trusting Bucky in this (as well as everything).

They pulled up to a hangar in a private airport mid-morning.  Steve could recognise a military operation when he saw one.  Bucky had let Steve drive the last few hours, now that he was confident that Steve wouldn’t argue with his directions, and he’d spent the time dozing in the front seat.  The silence between them was awkward and stifled, and Steve found himself sulking a little.

It wasn’t easy to reconcile Bucky as the Winter Soldier.  Accept it? Yes. Accepting it was as easy as Rumlow falling to the pavement had been, but accepting that he hadn’t noticed was just as difficult - or even more difficult - than it had been to reconcile that SHIELD was Hydra.

Then Bucky grumbled in his sleep when they hit a bump in the road, shifting and almost garroting himself on the seatbelt, and Steve found himself looking over at him and his feelings weren’t any different, as bruised as they currently were.

It was something he’d also have to think about.

Bucky slid out of the car with a confidence that said he knew where he was and that he belonged, sliding the cheap plastic sunglasses he’d stolen for Steve over his eyes and then looking at him.

“Come on,” Bucky said, gesturing towards the hangar.  “Let’s suit up.”  He turned and spoke to someone with a clipboard, walking forward and expecting Steve to follow.

x.x.x.

Steve thought of all the ways Bucky had saved him.  Before Bucky he’d been alone.  He’d been tired and hadn’t questioned enough in the early days.  He’d adapted around one huge point of trust that had been a lie.  Bucky had dragged him back into caring about having fun, and had forced him to face all the things he liked about the twenty-first century.  Bucky had helped, and when he couldn’t he found ways to give Steve the things he needed. 

There were things Bucky had known and understood, small moments of silent understanding and support, that made sense in retrospect.

Bucky was like Steve.  He killed people for a living. He thought of the fear in Rumlow’s eyes in those final seconds with a kind of satisfaction over the way he’d recognised Bucky and had known.   “If you were sent to assassinate me you did a piss-poor job of it.”

“We were looking for information and infiltration,” Bucky said, arms crossed over his chest.  He looked relaxed, but the kind of wary-relaxed of a predator not concerned about their surroundings because they were the most dangerous person in the room.  It was funny how often Steve had looked at Bucky and thought how dangerous he was, like his brain was trying to translate the things he observed with what he knew. 

“I was the weak link?”

“No,” Bucky admitted, pulling on a black shirt.  “You were supposed to be on our side.  Some of us believed you still were.”

Steve watched him.  Bucky was going through the motions of changing, and it didn’t look anything like Bucky Barnes, soft and adorable boyfriend.  The movements were sure and swift and practiced.  Practical.

Bucky looked at him. “I didn’t.  I wasn’t the first person they sent in.  You just had a habit of turning down overtures.”

“So they sent you to seduce me.”  And he’d spread his legs eagerly.  That was something he’d have to live with knowing about himself.

“Seduce you?” Bucky snorted as he selected a knife from the wall in front of him.  He shot Steve an amused glance as he pulled the sheath through his belt.  “No.  That had failed.  I was sent to kidnap you before the French Diplomat mission.”

Steve stared at him.

“But then you turned out to be easily seduced,” Bucky continued in a silky tone, pulling down his shirt and starting towards Steve.  “Aren’t you?”

Present tense.  “The term I was thinking was eagerly.”  Steve held him off.  “But since then I’ve told you I love you, so if you ever cared about me at all you should maybe consider what seducing me right now would do to that.”

Bucky paused and looked at him.  “You’re a good man.  A better man than I believed you could be when I approached you.  You needed someone to protect you.  I don’t regret it.”  The fact that he’d stopped moving forward towards Steve belied his words, or, if not his words then the way he used them to misdirect stopping his seduction.

Bucky moved through the steps of putting on his tactical vest with an easy competency and moved on to the weapon holsters.  Steve watched as he outfitted himself for a battle with guns and knives and grenades with a surety that said he knew how to use each one.  Bucky rapidly disappeared into The Winter Soldier until Steve didn’t know how he’d ever been fooled that Bucky was normal. 

The tactical outfit laid out for Steve was somewhere between Bucky’s (without the 50 pounds in weaponry) and his STRIKE suit.  It fit him well, almost as if someone had been waiting for him to be in this very hangar ready to deploy.  Bucky noticed the look and handed Steve a gun.  “I’ve sent a team to retrieve the shield from your apartment.”

Steve took the gun gingerly but there was a familiar warmth growing in his chest.

x.x.x.

Bucky was clearly team leader. He didn’t have to say a word once he stepped out on to the tarmac, stepping into the back of the plane.  Everyone started mobilizing after him, gathering their things and packing equipment.  Steve followed him.

It was familiar in a way.  Of all the shapes his life could have taken, he never would have pictured himself stepping into the role of potential traitor with such ease. Steve didn’t like bullies, even if those bullies were sanctioned by his own country.  It was a simplification, but in the end Steve could see who the bad guys were.  He was having a little more trouble seeing who the good guys were, but if The Winter Soldier and his team were ready to step up beside Steve against Hydra, then that simplified things too.

They landed outside of New York and someone handed Steve his shield.  He kept following Bucky across the tarmac, no one making a move to stop him, and climbed into the back of a transportation vehicle with him.

“A night raid would be better,” Bucky told him.  “But we’re after Pierce.  We can’t guarantee he’ll be there after dark.”

That didn’t surprise Steve.  There was something about Pierce he’d never trusted, despite the man turning down a Nobel Peace Prize and making an effort to engage Steve.  He’d always put it down to him being a politician first and a conversationalist second.  Hearing that Bucky equated the man with the head of Hydra explained a lot.

“You killed Seisling,” Steve realized.

Bucky closed his eyes, leaving them closed for a beat longer than necessary.  “That was unfortunate.”

Steve remembered the tragedy of civilians dying, and then he thought of Bucky calling Steve while drunk, and how he said the job had been a shitshow, everything possible going wrong with it.  He thought of the way Bucky had leaned on him, tucked against Steve’s side on the subway and later in bed, and he thought about what that might mean for them.

Steve had been talking with the Senator the first time he’d seen Bucky. The first time Steve had started to see Hydra within SHIELD, it had been when Bucky assassinated the man.  Steve had been sitting in his chair looking at the inconsistency of The Winter Soldier killing an entire family when Bucky had called him; Steve could see it for what it was.  Bucky had needed him that night in a way he couldn’t tell Steve.

He’d needed Steve the same way Steve needed Bucky.  He found he couldn’t be uncertain of Bucky or angry or petulant with that one secret but glaringly obvious truth.

Steve opened his mouth to say something when someone sat next to him, the vehicle filling up with other agents.  Someone handed Bucky a mask and closed the door, enclosing them in.

x.x.x.

Bucky put on the mask, fastening it over his lower face with an ease that spoke of familiarity.  His eyes crinkled around the corners as he looked at Steve and winked, and that too spoke of an easy familiarity.  Everyone was doing a final weapons check, more out of nerves than concern over their readiness.  Bucky was still and calm, smiling at Steve from behind the mask.  Then the driver banged on the metal sheet separating them from the cab, the signal that they were in place, and Bucky’s expression went cold and deadly.

He was the first one out the door.

Steve followed, and it felt so familiar - the sensation of having someone’s back and relying on them to do the same.  As they sieged SHIELD’s front door Steve tightened his fingers around his shield before pulling it back and letting it go in the lobby.  It immediately caught everyone’s attention, and Bucky looked at Steve mildly as he stood on a table and started speaking, warning everyone to surrender.

x.x.x.

Steve had always loved watching Bucky’s hands.  The man had miraculously nimble fingers that turned him on every time he focused on them.  Watching Bucky wield a knife was poetry in motion.  It was deadly and graceful, and so skilled it looked impossible.  There were reasons The Winter Soldier was a legendary assassin.

Bucky got a good look at Steve’s face once he stepped away from the three fallen bodies of Hydra members.  There was a spray of blood across his vest and one of the knives was still dripping on the floor.  His eyes looked dead until he blinked and frowned.  “Really?” he asked behind the mask and suddenly he was Bucky again, the goofy, sweet and sarcastic man who loved to tease Steve.  “That’s kinkier than I expected from you.”

“I’m not sure why,” Steve said.  “You know I’ve always liked displays of competency from your hands.”

“I kill people with them.”

“And they say you’re the best in the world.”

“Jesus Christ,” Bucky bit off a laugh and looked at Steve like he was full of delightful surprises.  “You have zero self-preservation skills.”  He shook his head but he looked happy.  He looked like there was a weight missing from his shoulders.  It gave Steve the courage to eventually ask the question that needed to be asked about whether or not Bucky had been present at all in their relationship.

“When you said you didn’t--” Steve broke off, not able to fully vocalize the words.  “Was it because you weren’t who you said you were?”

Bucky picked his way through the rubble in the hallway, over smoldering records, destroyed technology, and jagged pieces of concrete.  “I never said I didn’t,” he reminded Steve.  “I didn’t think it fair to comment either way considering the circumstances.  I don’t,” he clarified, taking the time to look Steve in the eye for that truth.  “And you don’t either.  It wasn’t real.”

That was a cliché.  Steve suspected Bucky lifted that directly from one of the movies they’d watched together as Bucky raised his gun and shot another one of the agents trying to stop their progress.  “That’s bullshit,” Steve answered him.  “Like hell it wasn’t.”

Bucky shot him a sarcastic expression.  “I’m not debating the nuances of the realisticness of our fake relationship with you while standing over grenade damage and three dead bodies.”

“We need to talk about it at some point.  Do you…” Steve started to ask. Do you love me? That was the wrong thing to say.  It was selfish to push that point, and this conversation wasn’t about Steve being selfish.  He paused and changed tracks.  “Are you trapped?”

“Steve,” Bucky answered, a bit impatiently.  He was popping a new magazine into his gun, quick, familiar movements.  He gestured to the hallway in front of them, the warfare going on around them, and the bottlenecked entrance up to the top floor.

“You know that’s not what I meant,” Steve told him, throwing his shield down the hallway and taking out half the men shooting at them.

“I don’t want to talk about this right now,” Bucky told him, using Steve’s opening to shoot the sniper and making it look easy.  Then there were only 4 left, and either one of them could handle 4 men with ease.  “We’ll have this out once we’re not in immediate danger, but not now.”  Then his expression softened, probably at the way Steve was staring at him with horror.  “It could easily have been just about sex,” he pointed out, taking pity on Steve.  “Fucking someone is easy and there weren’t really a shortage of volunteers looking to take that assignment on.”

Steve clenched his jaw so hard his neck muscles tensed up, and he jabbed his shield into the face of one of the 4 agents so that bone cracked.  His brain felt hollow and numb. 

“This is why I didn’t want to talk about it right now,” Bucky continued, breathing hard as he disabled 2 men, one with a bullet and the other with a vicious jab of his elbow followed up with a slice from one of his knives. “You don’t get it, and I need you focused on more than whether I was unwilling in your bed.  You’re hot and you have a nice dick.  I wasn’t unwilling.”

The last agent choked at hearing Steve had a nice dick, and Steve felt almost bad for kicking the man back through a window.

“But you weren’t…” Steve started to argue.

“Steve,” Bucky snapped in a sharp tone.  “Shut the fuck up.”

“Yes, understood,” Steve answered in a terse tone, the same one multiple commanding officers had said sounded like a ‘fuck you’.

“I didn’t say it back to you,” Bucky reminded him, pointing his gun at the floor and easing himself over to the corner so he could look around it.  Instead he looked at Steve, surprisingly direct and earnest.  “I told you that I’d hurt you, and here we are.  I had fun with you, and I’ll miss you when we walk away from each other, but I was aware the entire time we were together of who I was and who you were, and you weren’t aware, so what you’re worried you did to me was something I did to you.”

Steve swallowed.  He’d considered it for all of 3 seconds when he learned that Bucky wasn’t who he said he was, and then he thought of what his life had been before Bucky.  Without Bucky Steve would still be blind to the world around him.  “I’ll never regret it,” he told Bucky.  “And I’d be stupid to let you walk away unless it was what you needed to do.”

“Help me force the elevator doors open,” Bucky said instead of addressing that.  He stood at Steve’s side, ready with his weapon in case they were approached via hallway or through the elevator shaft.  The doors popped open with an application of pure strength and Bucky took a second to lean back into the elevator shaft so he could look up.

He wrinkled his nose at Steve, the same way he had when he was served cheese covered brussel sprouts, like he was prepared to face something he hated without complaint but he wanted Steve to know it was with unspoken protest.  Then he tucked his gun away.

Steve looked at Bucky.

Bucky looked back at him.  There was something weighted to his silence, something heavy in the way he met Steve’s eyes and held his gaze.

Bucky sighed. “I’ll climb this elevator shaft with you because someone needs to have your fool back,” Bucky told him in an easy, matter-of-fact tone, like they were discussing doing the dishes.  He stared Steve down like he already knew Steve’s argument against what he was going to say.  “I’d die for you.”

So Steve didn’t give it to him. “Because the world needs Captain America?”

“Captain America can die for all I care, but I need you.”  Bucky leaned in and rested his forehead against Steve’s.  “That’s as close to a confession as I can give you.”

“I need you, too.”

“I know,” Bucky gave him a quick and easy grin as he leaned into the elevator shaft, grabbing a handhold and pulling himself into the darkness.  “It’s only 15 floors to Pierce,” he said, like that was nothing.

x.x.x.

The top floor was on fire when they arrived.  Not metaphorically.  There was a thick smoke in the air and Bucky cursed when it came through the gap in the elevator shaft.  He was already breathing heavily from the effort of pulling himself up the last seven or so floors.  Steve went through the doors first, forging ahead without pausing to adapt to the heat and the smoke.

Bucky followed him, his mask more than decorative when he proceeded easily without coughing.  There didn’t seem to be anyone there, but the fire was still taking in places, the scent of an accelerant evident.  The elevators were shut down and the stairs were controlled by Bucky’s people. The majority of them had taken the points of egress quickly and had held.

“Steve,” Bucky said, pausing in front of the computer with a warning.  “Shit, it looks like someone is trying to wipe all the SHIELD servers,” he said, pulling out his gun and looking between Steve and the computer.

“Can you stop it?”

“I’m not that skilled with computers,” he said, and then seemed to get the irony of saying that to Steve.  “Yeah, ok,” he finished, bending over to look at the screen.  Then he reached for his comm unit for help.  “Someone is still here,” he reminded Steve.  “The roof?”

Steve looked above him.  He didn’t move very far beyond Bucky when they both heard the sound of a helicopter and Steve understood what was happening.  They’d restricted the way to escape by foot, but not by air.

He and Bucky exchanged a look.

Steve was moving on instinct, his brain screaming at him not to allow Pierce to get away.  Bucky was working on stopping Pierce’s mass-destruct of all the files, on comms with a member of his team talking him through uploading all of the remaining SHIELD files to a public server.  Steve paused to look at him for a moment, hesitating.  Bucky was vulnerable standing in front of the computer, intent on typing and listening to instructions.

Pierce getting away would be devastating, but not as devastating as losing Bucky could be.

“Don’t think about it,” Bucky told him in a clear tone, unimpressed with Steve’s hesitation even though he hadn’t looked up at him.

Steve huffed and made his decision, running past him, heading for the private helicopter pad above Pierce’s office.  He’d always seen it as a way to have high ranking officials take meetings with Pierce without the need for them to navigate their way through the New York streets, but now he was seeing it as the escape route it was.

The helicopter was taking off just as Steve hit the helicopter pad.  He remembered what had happened when the Red Skull got away, and he pictured how much worse it would be to have Pierce, with his gilded tongue and public image, to stand against the truth and win, no matter how damning the evidence.

He didn’t care how impossible it was.  Steve wasn’t shaped by sacrifice, he was shaped by stubbornness and an impossible inner strength.  He was shaped by rage against the injustices of people in power deliberately stepping on the people they should protect.  He was shaped by a life spent fighting to stay alive, by hunger and prejudice and illness and the people who would use those things against not just him, but also everyone like him.  He was shaped by taking a stand against power and saying ‘no, I won’t let you.’

Bucky was right.  Steve was resistance.

And he wasn’t letting Pierce escape, even if he had to stop him with his bare hands and sheer willpower. 

And so he grabbed on and refused to let go.  His feet scrambled for purchase and for a moment he thought he might be lifted into the air holding on to the helicopter runner.  Then his foot glanced back on the solid surface and he found something to hold on to, an anchor to stop him from being carried away.

It felt like the pain of getting the serum all over again, of being ripped apart, every muscle in his body shredding, his bones threatening to pop out of place.  His skin was a weak final defense against the pressure of holding back a helicopter with his bare hands, but Steve would hold on until that gave way too.

“Steve!” Bucky was shouting over the sound of the helicopter blades in his ear and the wind against his face.  Steve’s limbs screamed at him to let go.  It didn’t help that Bucky’s voice echoed the sentiment, sounding terrified for the first time since they’d met.  Steve looked over at Bucky, breaking his concentration for a second.  He couldn’t help but take one last look at him.  Bucky, ever competent and always knowing what to do, took out his assault rifle and took aim at the cockpit, shooting once and then three times in succession. 

The helicopter lurched and curved back towards him, and Steve’s momentary relief from the stress and pain of holding a helicopter in place was short lived as he had to suddenly use those same limbs to scramble out of the way.  It was an undignified and graceless roll, but the blades bit into the concrete instead of his body, grinding and screeching in protest as the helicopter kept moving, losing momentum as Steve threw himself out of the way, rolling across the concrete almost violently.  He felt metal tear into one of his calves and his elbow smashed hard against the ground, but when he rolled to a stop the helicopter was resting on its side in pieces, the motor dying, and he was still whole.

Bucky walked over to it with the sure, confident footfalls of a killer, dispassionately staring into the cockpit with his weapon ready.  After a moment he lowered his gun and looked over at Steve.

“Holy shit,” Bucky breathed, flopping down next to Steve on the helipad, pieces of debris surrounding them. They’d have to move within moments, but Steve needed to take a second to recover and Bucky didn’t seem any different.  He turned to look at Steve, breathing heavily and eyes wide with shock.  Then he started laughing.  “I fucking love you,” he said, somewhere between mirth, awe, and irony.  “You just took down a helicopter with your bare hands.  Jesus Christ.” He leaned in quickly for a kiss, tasting of ashes and blood.

“It’s the adrenaline,” Steve pointed out, as rational as possible, his hand tangled in the front of Bucky’s shirt.  It might be the adrenaline but he couldn’t force himself to let go. “You’ll feel differently in a few moments.”

“Fuck, no. You’re the worst,” Bucky complained, and then kissed him again.  “I almost had a heart attack watching you almost tear yourself apart to save the world.  I’m not taking it back.  You clearly need someone to stop you from doing stupid fucking reckless shit, oh my god.”

Steve thought of all the ways Bucky had saved him.  The list was getting long now that he needed to add in daring assassin rescues.  “Ok,” he said.


	11. Chapter 11

_**Epilogue: the Happy Ending** _

 

It was harder for Steve to adjust to the easy opulence of Bucky’s apartment than it was to adjust to a life of retirement.  He was at a loss as to what to do with his time. Being idle wasn’t a luxury Steve was familiar with, but neither did he feel comfortable jumping into another shadow organization without looking first.  Bucky didn’t push. Bucky handed Steve access to his credit card with a great deal of amusement and told him that his time was his own.

Steve didn’t really get the joke.

He hadn’t needed to use the credit card yet, comfortable with a roof over his head, food in the kitchen, and clothing that had been waiting for him that first night when Bucky had escorted him in, both of them exhausted from the battle.  Bucky’s expensive Brooklyn condo, with the view of the New York City skyline, was purchased on the blood of Hydra. Steve found that the fancy coffee maker was a bigger challenge than coming to grips the funding did.  Steve's career was based on the blood of Hydra as well.

Steve didn’t really need to own things.  Bucky’s tutelage had been more about claiming the space around him than it had been an exercise in consumerism, but it was very clear to Steve that Bucky did.  Steve was starting over from the beginning in learning about Bucky, and the first thing he learned from the apartment was that Bucky had put a lot of money into his love for Brooklyn.  He hadn’t lied when he told Steve that his dream was to own one of these units, he’d just left out the fact he’d achieved it.

It warmed something inside him to know that Bucky had given him the pieces he could.  He wondered when he’d started. 

He watched Bucky turn to look at him and then back to the television.  Steve had to crane his neck a little to see that there was a story on the news about a vigilante in a hoodie helping random people in Brooklyn.

“Maybe we should get you a costume,” Bucky said with mirth, turning off the news on his large flatscreen and moving over his kitchen.  The apartment was open concept, and full of furniture and electronics that were beyond Steve’s paygrade. When Steve had left that morning, Bucky had been out on assignment.  Now he was back, wearing a well-tailored suit and looking like sin.

Steve felt out of place rinsing his bloody knuckles off in the sink, but less out place than he felt a week ago.  The skin was flawless when he pulled his hand out from beneath the water. 

“All vigilantes need a costume,” Bucky continued, doing nothing to hide that keen awareness in his eyes.  He was holding himself coiled and dangerous. Steve’s hand automatically came up to Bucky’s shoulders, steady, as he lowered his forehead against Bucky’s.

“Tough day?” he asked, rubbing Bucky’s arms.

Bucky raised his hand to cup Steve’s cheek, leaning in to press a kiss to the corner of his mouth.  “Easier than some,” he answered. “There’s more blood on your hands today than on mine.” He backed Steve into the counter, his movements controlled and predatory in a way that made Steve’s heart pound in his chest.  “Tell me, Steve,” he said in a low voice, pressing Steve’s hands against the countertop. The marble was cool beneath Steve’s fingers, and he curled them around the corner to hold on. “Would you rather I was normal?”

“No,” Steve answered, a rapid burst of air.  He closed his eyes against the feeling of Bucky holding him down.  He wasn’t in danger, but part of him recognized the risk in letting someone like The Winter Soldier immobilize him.  Part of him wanted to tell Bucky that he _was_ normal, but if Bucky was normal then Steve was normal, and that wasn’t a lie he told himself.  He was learning to redefine his own sense of normality though.

On the second day of his stay, Bucky had his elegant and minimalist leather chairs removed from his living room and brought in a set of the oversized chairs Steve had picked for himself.  It was the grandest gesture Steve had ever received in his life. It said more than words could that Bucky would rearrange his life to fit Steve in it, the same way Steve had started doing for him.

Bucky was so close that Steve could feel his warm breath on his skin.  “Good,” he said.   “Do you know how hard it was for me to not just take sometimes? Whenever I forgot myself and bit a little too hard or held you down like I knew how to keep you there you always responded so positively to it.” He had his fingers in the back of Steve’s hair, angling his head back so Steve had to look up at him.  “You needed that from  _ me _ .”

There was something in the way he stressed ‘me’ that stuck out.  “Yes,” Steve breathed. “I need _you._ "

**Author's Note:**

> Find the author on tumblr: [relenafanel.tumblr.com](http://relenafanel.tumblr.com)
> 
> Find the artist on tumblr: [ellebeesknees.tumblr.com](http://ellebeesknees.tumblr.com)
> 
> Master Post: http://relenafanel.tumblr.com/post/179265481958/lessons-in-normality-a-collaboration-for
> 
> Art Post: <http://lenadraws.tumblr.com/post/179251198236>


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